Of Seafarers and Moonlight
by christinaking
Summary: "My journey in life has had twists and turns and huge uphill climbs and a few frightening free falls down the other side. But never have I allowed myself a journey like this - to find myself, to give myself time to live, and to let myself love someone, and allow him to love me back." (Sequel to Minotaur)
1. Chapter 1

_A/N - This is a sequel to Minotaur. Though you might be able to follow this story without reading that one, that story is referenced frequently and there will be some emotional leaps made here and there that won't be easily understood without that context._

 _Enjoy!..._

* * *

 _October 3, 2015_

I was born a child of multiple citizenship, which was never strange to me. Most of the children I encountered in my young life were in the same boat. For me, I was born very early on a foggy morning in London, exactly two weeks past my due date, on October twelfth, during a time my mother was appointed as a political attache under the Ambassador of the UK. My due date was September twenty-eighth, the night of the harvest moon in 1970, but I wasn't ready to come out yet, apparently.

My mother was familiar with the concept of having dual citizenship; she'd grown up similarly as a dual citizen of France and the United States. She was the one who went after citizenship for me in England. _It provides you with opportunity, Emily_ , she told me several times while I was growing up. And it has; it's what's allowed me to jump between jobs that require citizenship in the United Kingdom and the United States as my mood or situation dictated.

 _Lune des moissons._ That's what my father used to call me. Directly translated from French, it means Harvest Moon, but it irritated my mother greatly. "That's not how the French refer to the harvest moon," she harshly told him on several occasions that I can remember when I was a very young child.

"It's a good thing I'm not French then," he responded, always with a smile for me when I was in eyeshot.

When I was around six years old and we were living in Egypt, he simply shortened my nickname to _Lune,_ which shut my mother up even though we all knew what he meant.

To this day, my parent's relationship and how they possibly came together and stayed together for so long is a mystery to me, but not as great of a mystery as my father himself. I've spent a lot of time over the years imagining my mother and father first meeting during their freshman year of college. My mother was technically a student of Radcliffe, and my father at Harvard, but in 1959, women were permitted to take classes at Harvard, and they met in September of their first year there in a Political Science class.

When my mother talked about that time, she focused mostly on her studies, and always capped the conversation with the fact that in 1963, her diploma was one of the first to ever be signed by both the President of Radcliffe and the President of Harvard.

When my father talked to me about that time, he talked of the beautiful, intriguing woman whom he fell in love with almost instantly. He told me that he started taking classes in French his second quarter because both my mother and her parents spoke French, and he wanted to impress them.

My imagination has never stretched far enough to be able to envision how my father managed to fall in love with my mother. By the time I came into the picture and started having memories, my father was soft where my mother was hard; he was romantic where she was a realist; his relaxed face settled into a pleasant smile, and my mother's into a frown.

What he had that my mother didn't was an endless stream of money. Christopher Prentiss grew up beyond privileged, and alternated time between his family's home in Raleigh, and their mansion on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Elizabeth St. Claire grew up in an upper-middle class family that traveled a lot because her father, my grandfather, was a political attache and later an Ambassador.

What separated my mother and father as the years went by was the fact that my mother always wanted more - more money, more power, more connections - and my father would have been very content with much less.

The stories he told me when I was young centered around a small sailboat that his father bought him, and about his best friend, the maid's son, and the countless hours of happiness the two of them spent on the water. Though his parents were about country clubs and high-society gatherings, my father was much more content gutting fish and preparing it for the maid's family in their little cottage that sat behind his family's mansion. Much to his parent's chagrin, my father spent most of his free time in that cottage.

My memories of my mother when I was a young girl are powerful, harsh, no-nonsense advice and stories about pushing and busting through glass ceilings. I can't say that I'm necessarily sorry about that because that attitude got me to where I am in life, career wise. But I would have preferred at least one memory - a glimpse maybe - of the woman my father fell in love with.

My memories of my father are stories about the sea, about sailing, and about the moon. They were stories delivered with smiles and laughter and hugs and kisses. Every place we lived, my father would find water. He'd take me out on small sailboats or row boats and, be it a lake or the ocean or even a pond, I always felt relaxed out there, on the water with him, with the sun on my face. Often, we'd rock in the water and he'd read to me, a book in the language of whatever country we lived, and later, as I grew older, I'd read to him.

When we were on the ocean or a large lake, he'd have me draw a happy picture on a piece of paper that he'd roll up and place in a bottle. He'd push a cork in the top and smile at me as he tossed it far out into the water. "One day this will wash up on a shore somewhere and someone will find your picture and smile. Remember, Lune, you have the power to make even strangers smile."

"Lune," he said to me several times when I was growing up, "Did you know that a full moon clears the clouds in the sky? It's what we seafarers count on. You are my full moon."

I felt safe with my father, but I didn't feel safe with my mother's reactions to our activities together. When we'd return home, often muddied or sandy and wet, with fish on a hook, she'd harass my father about how he wasn't doing me any favors, allowing me to be a tomboy.

"Relax, Elizabeth," he'd tell her. "Our little lune is just right the way she is. She can be the guest at diplomatic dinners and have perfect manners, and she can sail and fish with me."

"Her name is Emily," my mother would state harshly while shaking her head at me, like I was a deep disappointment to her.

When we lived in places where access to a body of water was difficult, or when the weather was bad, my father shared with me his other hobby: The impossible bottle. He spent countless hours with his glasses perched on the tip of his nose, rigging masts and sails with miniscule hinges and delicate string. It was always like a magic show for me, how he'd place the hull and keel of the ship inside of a glass bottle and then pull some strings and the sails and masts would rise up inside, creating a stunning visual effect.

When I was thirteen, three things happened: My grandfather retired from his political career and randomly decided he wanted a quieter life in the French Alps, my mother was assigned to a position in Rome, and I started the rapid process that only puberty could bestow so harshly on a girl and went from child to young woman seemingly overnight.

I was never sure if my mother's criticism for me and my father increased several notches because of how her father was choosing to retire, in a cabin with no running water or electricity, or if it was because of me growing up. For whatever the reason, she started really laying into my father at every opportunity. Their fights were epic and I listened to them with tears in my eyes while huddled in my room.

"You agreed to have a child, and I committed myself to raising her while you pursued your career," my father would yell.

"She's getting older now, and that doesn't work anymore. She has to learn her place in this world. She has a family legacy of a life in politics she has to uphold," my mother would yell back.

The end result of those catastrophic arguments was that I was no longer allowed to spend time with my father out on the water, and I was no longer allowed to wear anything that did not say _dignified young lady._ My father still called me Lune. He still shared with me his friendly smiles, but they were less frequent. The light disappeared from his eyes. Looking back now, I can see my father during that time and recognize the signs of clinical depression.

I told Hotch one time, many years ago, that I thought politics ripped families apart, but I never told him or anyone else the details of how they had torn my family apart.

One day right before my fifteenth birthday, my mother and I returned home from visiting my grandfather and found my father gone. I heard my mother talking to her friend on the phone about how he'd taken five thousand dollars from their account, his passport and a suitcase, but had left her with everything else. At that point his parents were dead, and the amount of money he had walked away from and left with my mother was significant.

He left me with a ship in a bottle, _Little Lune,_ painted on the hull, and a note. "You will always be the one who chases the clouds away for me."

I never saw him again.

At first I was devastatingly depressed, and then I was bitterly angry. In the middle of that, while my mother was trying to make my outer shell as hard as hers and I was just craving warmth - any warmth at all - I slept with a friend. I got pregnant and had an abortion, and the emotional aftermath was enough for me to think that maybe my mother was onto something: A hard exterior and pushing feelings down or exorcising them completely seemed to be the right way to go.

I can honestly not remember a time I laughed out loud - something I'd freely done with my father for years - from the time I was fifteen until I arrived at college.

I told Derek back in August that I liked working for Interpol because constantly having to pretend to be someone else and go undercover made me not have to examine myself too closely. When Clyde refused to let me back in right after Doyle was arrested and said I needed to do something else for awhile, he was the one who selected the BAU for me. In the fall of 2006, something amazing and entirely unexpected happened: I found my father within me again and was able to reconnect with that person inside me who had an easy laugh and quick wit and enjoyed more than just the day-in day-out of living like an emotionless, unbreakable, perfect person.

But I lost her again eventually, and I moved back to London and went back to Interpol, like a dog going into a dark corner to lick my wounds. Away from everyone at the BAU, it was easy to just let my hard exterior be who I was, unless Clyde was being pushy and impossible; I softened around him sometimes.

But the case this past August changed absolutely everything for me.

I didn't put my flat in London on the market. When I read Clyde's letter twelve days ago, it sent me into frantic motion, and I didn't give myself time to stop and think because I knew I would have talked myself out of this move. I quit my job, packed up my personal belongings, and offered my flat for rent to an agent at Interpol whose wife just had twins and I knew he was looking for a bigger place. I gave him a screaming deal on my fully furnished flat, with one catch: that he ship my boxes to me as soon as I had an address to ship them to. They're on their way now.

I've accepted a new job at the Department of Intelligence that will, for the most part, come with regular, predictable hours, and I start next Monday.

The townhouse I've rented is narrow and three stories and far too large for one person, but it had what I wanted: balconies overlooking the Potomac where I can watch the boats passing by. I have a small yard, which is something I've never had before in any place I've ever lived, but I decided that putting things in dirt and watching them grow was something I wanted to experience in my life.

And I have what most of the world would call a boyfriend, though that word seems too juvenile for a woman who is days away from forty-five years old, and it's so trite for what Derek Morgan means to me it's laughable.

Six days ago, I landed at Dulles with two suitcases, Clyde Easter's urn, and the intent of unloading on Derek Morgan the entirety of my issues. I rented a car and drove to his house. His mom let me in and hugged me; she said, "I knew you'd come," in my ear.

But then I saw him outside, laying on a lounge chair and staring up at the orange moon in the sky. He was utterly beautiful and terrifying at the same time and I had to whisper "Don't run," to myself before I spoke to him.

My secrets and issues died on my lips, and I talked instead of a slow beginning, of starting over without anything desperate or terrifying as the backdrop for our relationship.

To him, it probably wasn't huge, but I told him a small story about my father; it was the first time I'd ever told a personal story about my father to anyone. I decided to give him the pieces of myself over time, as I could, like I figured most people did when they entered into a relationship.

I couldn't bring myself to tell him that I'd been exposed to HIV on the case in August, or that it had been so long after my exposure that antiretrovirals were useless, and I'm just going to have to wait it out until the middle of November and re-test. After three weeks of dealing with the aftermath of the Minotaur case on my own, I could imagine no greater comfort than falling naked into Derek's bed and arms, but I settled for laying with him on a lounge chair for a couple of hours, talking quietly and staring at the moon.

He's following my lead so far. I've met him for lunch and we've gone out to dinner. We've gone furniture shopping for my new place in the evenings and sat together on the balcony here, looking out at the water. We hold hands and we kiss and we lay together on my new sofa and watch TV, but he goes home every night, even though he and I both know we want him to stay.

It seems almost silly considering everything we shared back in August, but it also seems right, this slow path to...something.

The bottle with the ship in it that my father left me has always come with me, wherever I lived, but it's stayed packed away in a box. Here, for the first time, it sits prominently on the mantle, and when Derek asked me about it, I told him about my father and his countless hours creating those ships in a bottle when I was a little girl.

He doesn't press me for more information than I'm willing to give, like he can sense that I'm treading on uncharted waters when I talk about my dad. I haven't told him the stark reality: I haven't told him that my father was everything good in my world and then one day just disappeared and I never heard from him again.

We haven't touched on the huge issues I have with trust because of that. Nor have I mentioned the irony, that it's easier for me to trust people with my life than it is to trust them with my heart. I think it's because I know death would be fast, and injury might physically hurt me, but having my heart broken again might destroy me.

I've been faced with a hell of a lot of nearly impossible undercover operations that I've always managed to get through. But this - this going undercover as myself - is going to be the most difficult thing I've ever faced. I'm alone here, without a real compass that doesn't have a competing interest in the end result. For the first time, I'm going into something like this without a plan or intended outcome.

There is my heart and my mind and Derek Morgan. There is my past and his past and an uncertain, but hopeful future.

My journey in life has had twists and turns and huge uphill climbs and a few frightening freefalls down the other side. But never have I allowed myself a journey like this - to find myself, to give myself time to live, and to let myself love someone like I love Derek Morgan, and allow him to love me back.

This is my own, personal Everest, and I've decided to climb it to the peak, even though I don't know what the path or end will look like.


	2. Chapter 2

_October 5, 2015_

To say Emily and I both hitched a ride to hell and back this past August would be right about on target. I know if I asked her, she would say that, given my past, what I had to experience was worse than what she had to endure, but she'd be wrong. She went in with those people alone most of the time, and I only ever experienced anything sexual or brutal at her hands, which never felt like they harmed me - because _she_ would never harm me.

The very unexpected outcome in all of this for me is that I finally feel able to talk about my past. I put myself in a position of submission and vulnerability, at Emily's hands, in order to help put an end to a massive sex-trafficking ring. And I had 100% absolute faith and trust in her when she said she'd kill anyone else who tried to lay a hand on me, which is usually my position - I'm the protector, not the protectee. Those things combined - my biggest fears and aversions being realized - were what enabled me to sit down in front of an FBI therapist and talk honestly rather than hedging and shutting down.

I was mandated to therapy when I returned to DC, before I could go back to work, and I'm continuing to go now even though I don't have to. Emily got to skip that part of the process by quitting her job when her part of the investigation was over, and then coming back home and quickly finding a new, different type of job. It's not that I think she's not ready to face her new job. In fact, I think in a couple of hours a brilliant whirlwind named Emily Prentiss is going to walk into the Department of Intelligence and they're not going to know what hit them.

I'm worried about the downtime, the hours after work and on the weekends. I'm worried about how we'll fit together over time given who we are and what we experienced this past August.

The only time she's mentioned that case was two days ago, and it was brief.  
 _  
_" _Did you follow standard protocols when you got back?" she asked over dinner._

 _I raised my eyebrow at her and she smiled softly. "Did you have bloodwork done, Derek?"_

" _Oh," I replied. "Yes. I got the four-star treatment - mandated therapy and a full physical with my regular doctor. All I had to mention was that I was injected with drugs at first, from needles I could not verify the sterility of, and I had a tourniquet on my arm and my blood being drawn practically before I finished my statement."_

 _She nodded. "Good."_

" _You did, too, didn't you?" I asked._

" _Of course. I'm clean, but I have to go back in a couple of months for a retest."_

" _Me, too," I said._

 _She stood from her kitchen table then and started gathering the plates. She smiled at me again, "I'm sure it will be fine. Want to go for a walk?"_

When I mentioned to my therapist last week that I was concerned that Emily seemed to not want to discuss the case at all, he said that there was every possibility that Emily was feeling like a victim in all of this, given everything she'd done to get me back, save those kids and make the arrests. And that from what I'd told him in the few weeks I'd been home, feeling like a victim probably settled worse for her than it did for the vast majority.

"It's possible to feel like a victim even if you choose to participate in debasing activities to save someone you care about, even if you know you'd do it all again for the outcome you attained," Dr. Hansen said to me last Friday.

I know all of that, but it's been nice to have a neutral person to discuss it with. Not that I've spent my hours in therapy only discussing Emily. A lot of what I've been talking to Dr. Hansen about has centered around something my mother said to me when I was in the hospital in Essex, that I was going to keep doing this job until I'd slayed the monster that was inside me because of my own past.

When my feet were still healing from my burns and I was unable to walk and spending most of my waking hours out in my backyard, thinking, I ran through the numbers: In all of my years in law enforcement, I have been part of taking down seventy-seven child predators. Seventy-seven, with exponentially larger numbers of child victims saved. It makes me wonder what the magic number is, that final arrest that's going to set my heart completely free and let me know that I've done enough.

Dr. Hansen asked me what I think the root of my issues are that compel me to stay in this job. It's not what happened to me personally as a teenager; it's the forty-plus kids who came after me; you boys who suffered at the hands of Carl Buford because I never said anything for so many years.

"Being compelled by guilt is not a really solid foundation for making life decisions," Dr. Hansen said last week.

That one sentence sent my head spinning, because deep, unspoken guilt has compelled a lot of decisions I've made in life. Guilt keeps me looking for the monsters out there; guilt keeps me at the BAU doing so because I couldn't imagine leaving Hotch or the team even if there have been occasions when I felt it might be time for me to move on to a different team or different career focus with similar outcomes. Guilt that my mother was worried that I hadn't settled down yet in life compelled me to push forward with Savannah even though I knew it wasn't an entirely honest relationship - I loved her and cared about her, but without feeling guilty because I was making my mother concerned, I'm not sure Savannah and I would have lasted as long as we did.

And there's a certain amount of guilt tied up in my relationship with Emily, which worries me. I never really got over missing out on capturing Doyle and saving her from having to go into hiding for several months by mere seconds. So, when she came back, I was around a lot more, spending time with her.

She felt guilty for what she put me through, and I felt guilty for her having to go through it, and we wallowed in that guilt by _not_ acknowledging it over beers at her condo or my apartment or a bar.

It took me thinking she was dead to realize my feelings for her extended far deeper than work partners and friends. It took her coming back and pushing down the anger I felt at the betrayal of her actually being alive all those agonize months to not say anything to her about how I really felt. I pushed those feelings down, right up until the moment she said, "London." Then they exploded in one beautiful, ill-advised night after JJ's wedding that I don't regret now, but I did back then.

And I know that there might be guilt there, but I don't love her because of guilt. I loved her long before guilt entered the picture.

The day after Emily came back to DC, I went with her to look at the row house in Georgetown she wanted rent. The place is architecturally gorgeous and impressive, and the rent is astronomical.

Without a job offer yet, I watched Emily write a check for first and last month's rent, along with a deposit and three months of rent in advance. She'd told me she hadn't put her flat in London on the market, and she was renting it out for cheap to an Interpol agent and his family.

When I raised my eyebrows at the huge check, she grinned at me. When the owner of the property left after handing Emily the keys, she said, "I want nice place and a water view. I want to be able to run along in the Potomac. And if I'm not going to be having the long hours I used to have or needing to travel much at all, I want a place I'll enjoy. Besides, Clyde left everything to me, and he'd be happy his money is helping me be someplace I want to be."

Every time she says Clyde's name, a veil of sadness swipes quickly over her eyes, and then it's gone. Talk about guilt - even though he was already dying, the fact that he sacrificed his life for me is not something I'm going to move past quickly.

Emily's been fast, buying a car and sweeping through a furniture store last Monday, my first day back at work, and buying the things she needed. There are four bedrooms in her place, but she's only furnishing two - a bedroom and an office. Nearly everything in her row house right now is new - new furniture, new kitchenware, new appliances, new towels and bedding, new throw rugs. She has empty bookshelves and nothing up on the walls because those things are being shipped from London.

The two personal items she did bring with her besides clothing is Clyde Easter's urn, which she says she doesn't know what to do with yet, and a ship in a bottle that she says her father made far her.

The short stories about her father here and there have been interesting and different and I get the sense that they're leading up to something, but I'm not sure what. Christopher Prentiss seemed to materialize out of thin air; such a non sequitur in Emily's story that I know there's a deep significance there, but I'm not pushing. Stories about her father seem to be her own brand of therapy that she's sharing only with me.

I don't know what I was imagining when Emily came back. A part of me thought perhaps we'd pick up right where we left off in Theydon Garnon, with nights holding each other and keeping the nightmares away, and phenomenal sex that made me feel more connected to her than I ever have with another person, and sitting around in the mornings sipping coffee, completely relaxed with each other despite the horrifying circumstances.

It's not that I thought she'd just hop on a plane and move in with me. To be honest, I wouldn't want her there because that house doesn't really feel like home to me anymore anyway. And I knew she was independent and would probably want to start of in a place of her own. But I didn't quite expect the chaste, almost shy physical interactions between us, like we're two-stepping around each other trying to find our footing without stumbling or stomping on the other's feet.

How everything between the two of us could seemingly come so easy when faced with a terrible situation and be so difficult now that we're both here on the same continent and free and clear of that case is beyond me. But I'm going with it for now, because there are other parts of this that feel even more intimate, like coming by after work and sitting together on one of the balconies at her place, holding hands and watching the water. Or how last Wednesday she met up with me and the team after work for beers, just like old times, and she greeted me with a quick kiss when she arrived.

Those intimate strings are my hands on her waist when she's cooking and the way she smiles when I kiss her neck. They're the way I flicked her with bubbles while I was doing dishes the other night and she threw her head back and laughed. They're her head on my lap while we watch TV and her content hums when I run my fingers through her hair.

They're the way we kiss each other goodnight every time I leave her house and how her eyes might be saying it's time for me to go, but the pounding of her pulse that I can feel is begging me to stay.

Last week in therapy Dr. Hansen also said that staying completely passive and not discussing my needs or wants in a relationship because I'm afraid Emily will bolt if I do is not exactly a great start for any real, healthy relationship.

I acknowledge that this is also true. It's a difficult bridge to cross, but I'm trying, in a delicate way.

Two days ago, on Saturday, she told me she had something she needed to do during the day, but I could pick up take-out for dinner if I wanted. I have no idea what she did that day, but when I got to her place with Chinese food, her cheeks were sun-kissed and she smelled like the outdoors.

"What did you do today?" I asked her.

"You'll find out soon enough," she said with a grin.

I touched her cheek and whispered, "I've missed this."

"What?" she asked.

"Seeing you without makeup," I said simply. When she arched her brows, I continued. "Emily, you and I both stayed in the same hotels when you were with the BAU and stumbled into work together in the middle of the night because of a case. I've seen you sleepless, injured and even with a hangover, and night or day, you almost always had your face freshly polished with some make-up, like it was a necessary part of your outer shell."

"My mother puts on makeup to go to the gym," she said quietly, almost embarrassed.

"Do you?" I asked, putting my finger on her chin to raised her head so she could see my soft smile.

"No, I just go to gyms where no one knows me."

I laughed and she joined me, and then I touched her cheek again. "Being with you in that house in Theydon Garnon was beauty in horrifying circumstances. I miss a lot of things about being in that house with you. I know you want to go slow and I'm good with that. But I liked hanging out in sweats, fresh out of bed and drinking coffee in the mornings. You're beautiful with makeup on, and you're more beautiful to me without it, because you're breathtaking just as you are, and because it means you have a level of comfort with me that you don't normally let people see."

She gave me a half smile and looked down. "OK," she whispered.

Yesterday morning when I showed up with bagels and coffee, she opened the door with a fresh face, still in her pajamas.

This morning isn't like that, though. This morning, I bring her her coffee and she's already dressed and in a suit for her first day of work, looking very Emily-like - completely together and not nervous at all, even though she's about to embark on an entirely new career.

"Well, hello, Agent Prentiss," I say.

"That's Ms. Prentiss in this job," she says, and then she wrinkles her nose and laughs. "I hope people just call me Emily."

"Good morning, Emily," I say again and kiss her lightly. "Ready to take the Department of Intelligence by storm?"

"Something like that," she says as she kisses me back. "I have a question for you. What are you doing this Saturday?"

"Hmmm. I was thinking something involving a nice restaurant for your birthday," I reply.

"My birthday's not until next Monday. Could we do dinner Sunday or even Monday? I was thinking of taking you someplace for my birthday on Saturday."

I smile at her and try to figure out where she's going with this. With her coffee cup in one hand, she produces a picture and hands it to me with her other. "The weather's supposed to be perfect on Saturday."

I'm looking at a picture of a small sailboat. "You sail?" I ask.

"Not in decades, but it turns out I haven't forgotten much. That's where I was on Saturday. The owner of that boat took me out on the Chesapeake Bay. And then I bought it. It's an older boat, but it's got new sails and it's in good shape and it's a size I can handle, or we can handle. Yesterday afternoon after you left, I drove out to Annapolis and painted a name on it, because all good boats need a name."

I look at her bright face and at the picture again, holding it at a different angle to read the black paint on the hull. _Deux Lunes._

"The boat has a motor, so we won't get in trouble. If the sailing is too much, we'll just use the motor and get out on the water. There might not be many good weekends left until next Spring," she says animatedly, but a little uncertainly.

I glance at the ship in a bottle on her mantlepiece - Little Lune - and swallow back an unexpected lump in my throat. I don't know where she's taking me, literally or figuratively, but I know I want to get on the ride with her.

"It means 'Two Moons,'" she says even more quietly.

"I know. And I can think of no place I'd rather be on Saturday."

She smiles again. "You're the other moon, by the way. I'll tell you why on Saturday."


	3. Chapter 3

_October 7, 2015_

I never appreciated the fall in London like I did when I lived in DC. Summers in London are relatively mild, and fade into fall almost without you realizing it. In DC, I'd always get to about mid-August and start thinking I was going to die if I had to suffer one more day of humid heat, so when the winds shifted and a crispness in the air starting making an appearance in the early mornings and evenings sometime around mid-September, I thrilled with the relief I knew was coming.

It's a crisp evening tonight, and I'm thankful for it as I make my way home, opting to walk a few blocks before I catch a cab, or maybe I'll walk the whole way. I keep my head down so my puffy eyes aren't visible to passing strangers. I'm not sure if I feel better or worse, and I think it's a combination of both. There's uncertainty and discomfort inside me, and also a strange sense of freedom.

Two days ago, on my first day of work, Derek texted me to let me know his doctor had given him the green light to start running again. It made me smile when I received it and I invited him to join me for my early-morning runs along the Potomac. He planned to join me the next morning, but instead I woke up to a phone call from him telling me there was a case in Nebraska and he had to head into the office.

He still doesn't have his field clearance back, so I know he's currently helping run the case from the police precinct. Based on the couple of brief conversations we've had, he's going slightly stir crazy.

"We'll start running regularly and get you back in shape quickly. You'll be back out in the field before you know it," I told him this morning.

I didn't tack on that I didn't particularly want him back out in the field; I'm much more comfortable with him in the safety of the police precinct. Seeing him nearly go up in flames placed a layer of fear around my heart that squeezes me slightly every time Derek mentions getting back out in the field. I think the feeling will fade with time. I hope it does.

I ran without him yesterday morning, but when I arrived back at my place, Penelope Garcia was sitting on my front steps. She had a coffee in her hand, but I could tell by her face that this wasn't just a social call.

"Hey," I said breathlessly. "How's the case going?"

"Good. We're getting closer. It's an hour earlier there and they're to report back to the precinct at seven o'clock, which gives me a little time before I need to be back in the office. I hear you've been having your coffee delivered to you every morning since you've been back, and I didn't want you to miss out."

I smiled at her. "Thank you."

The truth was that I had a perfectly functioning coffee pot, but it was also true that Derek had been taking care of that particular vice for me since I'd been back. He was hesitant, almost apologetic the first couple of times he showed up in the mornings, like he didn't know if he was being pushy or if all the time he was spending with me was okay.

I haven't told him that starting and ending my days with him gives me more comfort and happiness that I've ever really known; I haven't told him about the fear - the fear of a relationship in general and the fear about potentially being infected with HIV - that swirls inside me at various times throughout the day is the only thing keeping me from grabbing onto him and asking him to just stay with me every night.

Penelope handed me the cup of coffee and I dug my key out of the zipped pocket on my running pants. It was obvious she had plans to come in, and I immediately felt apprehensive. Penelope and I had forged a bond in August that would last a lifetime, but she also spent a lot of time alone with Clyde. She told me she was going to be calling me on my shit, and I had a feeling that's what she was there for. I was holding onto a lot of shit. Derek may be tiptoeing around me - which was something I intended to talk to him about on the boat this Saturday - but there was no delicacy in Penelope's features or demeanor.

When we got inside, she took in the place and whistled. "Nice," she said and smiled.

"Thanks. I love it. My boxes are supposed to arrive late this afternoon and then I'll love it even more."

I took a sip of coffee. I was about to make an excuse that I needed to immediately get in the shower and get ready for work, but she interrupted that thought process.

"Do you think you're emotionally stronger than Derek?" she asked.

Perplexed, I answered, "No. Not really. I mean in certain areas, but he's much more emotionally stronger than me in other areas."

"Huh. How about Hotch or Rossi or JJ or Reid?" she challenged.

I shook my head and averted my eyes. "Probably similar. We all have our strengths, given the situation."

"Did you know we were all ordered to therapy when we came home? Everyone of us. Derek needed it for what he went through. JJ probably didn't need it as much as the rest of us, but she was still traumatized. The rest of us _all_ watched the surveillance feed in that auction house, Emily. We _all_ saw what was happening to those children, and we all wanted to throttle Clyde and Marcus when they told us we had to wait until all fourteen kids up for auction showed up on that stage, or we could blow the whole thing. So I'm wondering what it is that makes you think you have what we don't have, and why it is that you think you can just bypass therapy."

I stared at her and finally whispered, "I'm doing okay."

She laughed. "Sure. Of course you're going to be okay. You always are, in your own strange way. But what's okay to you? You didn't go to therapy after Doyle. You didn't even talk to Clyde about it. So when Doyle resurfaced, you went all GI Jane on us because you panicked about telling the people in this world who truly loved you the truth. You lied to your therapist when you came back from Paris. And when shit got hard, you packed up and moved to London. In 2007, you nearly quit the team, but when you came back, you sold all your furniture and moved to a new condo for a fresh start. You gave away everything in _tha_ t condo when you moved to London. I'm still sitting on your old couch every night at my place. Now you walked away from everything in London and came here and started over again. We're all glad you did, especially Derek. But if 'OK' to you is cutting bait and starting over the second things get hard, what does that mean for you? What does that mean for Derek?"

At that point, I was barely holding onto my tears, Inside, I was cursing the day I ever let Penelope Garcia spend significant hours alone with Clyde Easter, though if he was still around, he'd be telling me the same things, and I knew it. I felt like a child being busted for doing something wrong; my cheeks burned with anger and embarrassment, and sadness crashed around inside me like a thunderstorm.

"I wouldn't hurt Derek like that," I finally whispered.

Penelope softened at that a bit. "You wouldn't want to, but you don't just give up a lifetime of coping mechanisms like ripping off a band aid. It takes work, Em. I asked my therapist for some names, and she gave them to me. They're on the back of this card," she said. I watched her pull a business card out of her purse. "But on the front of this card is my therapist's number. She's a nice woman, and she knows the back story to this case, so you wouldn't have to rehash it. She says she's willing to stay for a six o'clock appointment tomorrow night. So think about it. She's just a couple of miles away from here."

My immediate reaction was resistance, like there was no way in hell I was going to that therapy appointment, but I took the card from Penelope's hand. Then she was in front of me - dressed nicely for work in her unique Garcia way, while I was covered in drying sweat and running clothes. It didn't seem to matter to her. She wrapped her arms around me, and I returned the hug with the card in one hand and my coffee in the other. She rubbed her hands on my sweaty back. "We all love you, Emily. We want you to stay put this time and be happy."

She released me and I gave her a small smile and a nod. I couldn't talk in that moment. She smiled at me, squeezed my hand and turned to leave, but paused at my front door.

"We've all got our issues, Emily, and those issues are the reason we chose the career we did. I tragically lost my parents, Derek lost his father and had Carl Buford, Reid had his issues with his mom's mental health, Hotch has eluded his childhood was not sunshine and roses, JJ's sister committed suicide. Rossi keeps his issues close to the vest, but you and I both know that they're there. There's no shame in them, Emily, and nothing about them that makes us weak. They make us committed to helping people and keep us human, but we have to deal with them."

With that she opened the door and left, closing it softly behind her.

I think I stared at that therapist's business card for about ten minutes before I set it on my counter and made my way upstairs to the shower. I let myself squeeze out a few tears and then got it together and got myself ready for work.

Penelope's words stayed with me much of the day, but I still might have blown off the therapy appointment if it wasn't for my boxes arriving from London.

I left work a little early yesterday to be there when they arrived, then I dug into those boxes like a woman on a mission to just be distracted from my own thoughts. I hung up the rest of my clothes and happily put my shoes in my closet. I unwrapped decorative items that I loved and put pictures on shelves and on the walls. I loaded the built-in bookshelves in the living room with my library.

I saved the two boxes Clyde had left me for last, but I finally opened them, too. I'd brought his jacket and his urn with me on the plane, but I'd never spent any significant time with the books that remained in the two boxes. I grabbed his cookbooks first, and noticed that the titles remaining in the box were very much an eclectic mix of literature.

I carried the cookbooks to the kitchen and started putting them on a shelf. When I got to the last one, _From My French Kitchen to Yours_ , I quickly flipped through the pages and noticed handwriting in the margins. And my name.

My eyes welled with tears as I read next to the recipe for Quiche Maraichere, _Emily, this would be a good starting recipe if you're going to use this cookbook. But yours will never be as good as mine!_

I laughed and sniffled and went back to the boxes in my living room. I picked a random book out and didn't even pay attention to the title, I just flipped it open and started thumbing through the pages. There were messages throughout the book.

 _She sounds like you - brilliant and stubborn._

 _Read this passage - there's much to be learned here._

 _Emily, Emily, Emily...does this not resonate with you? This woman has the ability to shut down so completely it's almost painful to watch or read about. Don't let this be you._

I must have flipped through those books for a couple of hours before falling asleep on the living room floor, surrounded by Clyde's messages to me.

This morning, I woke up with determination. I skipped running and settled for a long shower to help get rid of the puffiness in my eyes. I exited my house and went to work with firm resolve, and this evening I went to the therapy appointment.

Lila is a kind, warm person, and someone I felt comfortable around immediately. But she started right in with, "Penelope's told me the background of the case you were on in August and told me it was okay to discuss what I already knew with you."

I broke down at that one sentence and sobbed out, "I'm supposed to be unbreakable."

There were more tissues used than words spoken, but we touched on some issues and she gave me enough to work on until I see her again on Friday; namely I need to try to stop holding everything I saw and experienced inside of me; I need to stop pretending it doesn't affect me.

I could have told myself that. Knowing what I should do and actually doing it are very different things.

But I think about her words as I keep walking towards home, and I opt out of the cab all together. I enjoy the cool air on my cheeks and think.

When I get home, I can see there are lights on inside. Derek has a key, and I'm assuming it's him and he's home from the case. I touch my cheeks and eyes, and they're still puffy, but I let it go. I walk up the front steps and open the door.

Derek's sitting on the floor of the living room, pretty much in the same place I slept last night, surrounded by Clyde's books.

He startles when I open the door. "I'm sorry!" he says hastily as he sets one of the books down.

I smile and shake my head at him. "It's okay. I don't mind you reading them."

He stands and walks towards me, taking in my face. His gentle fingers on my cheek are all that it takes for me to come undone again. "Every night when I close my eyes, all I see are those children up on a stage being abused and molested," I cry.

His arms around me are pure relief and comfort. His breath on the side of my face feels like it's breathing air into my own lungs.

"I love you," I whisper. "I haven't told you that since you left London, but I do. I'm here because I love you, and I'm going to stay here because I love you."

The smile I can feel as it spreads against the skin of my cheek is worth every ounce of fear in me. His whispered, "I love you, too," are four words that spin inside me and start a new chapter in the story that is my life.


	4. Chapter 4

_October 10, 2015_

I've spent a little less than half of my life making a living by reading people - their facial expressions, their eyes and their mannerisms. Though I actively try not to profile people outside of work, sometimes it's impossible, especially when they're throwing their emotions and feelings out there like a red carpet.

That was Emily this morning when she picked me up to bring me to Annapolis and her new boat. She smiled when I came out of my house and tossed a bag in her back seat, then got in the passenger seat of her car.

She was dressed loose capri pants and a zip-up sweatshirt over a t-shirt. Her scent was a combination of the soap she normally uses and sunscreen; her face absent of makeup. It was slightly overcast so early in the morning, but I'd checked the weather and knew the clouds were going to burn off and we were looking at a mild day in the high seventies.

We made the one-hour drive in near silence, my hand in her hers where she clutched my fingers firmly. She smiled at me frequently, but occasionally would brush her eyes, like she was trying to wipe away tears before they filled her eyes. On my part, I was barely containing my emotions and questions. That I was going to get some answers today, about who Emily was, had my stomach nervous and my anxiety on high alert. I wanted to ask her to stop the car, to grab onto her body and hold her in my arms and say, "Just tell me. Tell me everything."

The previous two days had been better between the two of us, or at least more relaxed. I was relieved she was now going to therapy. She saw her therapist last Wednesday evening, when I'd just gotten back from a case. That night, she was emotionally exhausted; she went upstairs to change into comfortable clothes and we made breakfast food for dinner, which we ate on the couch. I hadn't slept much in a couple of days, and between her weariness and my lack of sleep, we fell asleep on her couch together pretty early in the evening, her body practically on top of mine and my arms wrapped around her. The next morning, we went jogging together and I showered and got ready for work at her place, both of us comfortable with each other in close quarters while we got ready for the day.

I slept at home on Thursday night, and yesterday Emily went back for another therapy session. She called me after and asked me not to come over that evening, that she had things to get ready for the next day and she just needed to think.

We've talked more about the case in August, and she's been honest about all the things she saw and participated in that are weighing heavily on her, but I wasn't sure what I was going to get when she picked me up this morning.

What I got was a woman who was a strange combination of pure elation and deep sadness, with facial expressions like I've never seen before. She slung a bag over her shoulder and grabbed an small ice chest from the trunk of her car when we got to the marina. She practically skipped down the wooden planks to her boat and smiled as she showed me around the twenty-seven footer, complete with a clean, efficient cabin below deck that had two bench seats that could be converted into a bed, a small kitchen, a miniscule bathroom and some storage.

She gave me an overview of the basics of sailing and then she turned on the engine and we slowly made our way out of the marina and into the Chesapeake Bay. I watched her body move with confidence as she opened up and hoisted the sails, and I watched her face, smiling as the wind caught them, smiling while tears dripped down her face and she looked out on the water.

She sat, her left hand on the tiller extension and her right hand available to adjust the mainsheet as needed. I sat across from her and felt the wind and slight sea spray hitting my face, and waited - not sure what I was waiting for, but knowing it was going to be important, possibly life altering...

When we're well away from any other boats, she looks at me and gives me a watery smile. "From the time I was about three, when I could be trusted to stay put when told, until I was a teenager, I spent significant time out in the water with my dad. Not always sailboats, but they were his favorite. I went out on a few sailboats when I was in college, boats that belonged to the parents of friends I made," she says to me as we move swiftly across the water. "It wasn't enjoyable. I was there because I wanted to sail, and everyone else was there to drink and party. I ended up being the sailor, but it was never as good as it was for me when I was a child."

She turns her head to look at me. "The last time I enjoyed sailing was when I was thirteen and a half years old. My dad and I spent a few weeks on his sailboat, slowly meandering our way from France, where my mother had been assigned, to Italy, where she was newly appointed. I remember the end of our journey like it was yesterday. We got the boat settled in a marina in Fiumicino and were prepared to hire a cab for the short drive to Rome and our new house. We were both slightly sunburned and our hair was a mess and we smelled like the sea. When we got to the parking lot there was a limousine waiting for us, and a driver with a grim face. My mother emerged from the car, stared me down, and said, 'That's enough of this.' They fought a lot about it for several months, but that was ultimately the last time I sailed with my dad."

I watch in silence as she moves her right hand to brush away the tears on her cheeks. It's not lost on me that this is comfortable for her - both the sailing and the fact that she can talk to me like this while controlling a boat, in a position where I can't really touch her to reassure her. She's not shut off or emotionless, but I'm pretty sure placing one hand on her in this moment would have her dissolving in uncontrollable tears, and she doesn't want that.

"Looking back now on all of their arguments I overheard through the years, and taking the time to apply what I know about adult behavior, I think my mother was always jealous of the easy relationship I had with my dad. Her own father was gruff and judgmental and she was always seeking his approval. I think it hurt her deeply that right when her career was finally starting to move up and she was a stone's throw away from finally attaining an ambassadorship, her father retired and moved away to an isolated cabin in the French Alps. She took that anger and hurt out on my father. Thinking back now, he started drinking a lot more, and I'm fairly sure he was depressed. My mom won't talk about him at all, so I don't know for sure. All I know is that two weeks before my fifteenth birthday, we came home from France where we were visiting my grandfather, and my father was gone. He left me that ship that's now on the mantle in my place and a note that assured me that I would always be his full moon, the one who chased the clouds away. I never saw or heard from him again. He was the person who made my childhood happy, and then he was gone and I was left with my mother." She laughs lightly, bitterly through her tears. "It didn't go well."

I'm getting a bigger picture of who Emily Prentiss is, and it's killing me that I can't touch her right now. I spent from April of 2011 until now thinking that the person who shaped and malformed her life and how she interacted with people was Ian Doyle; now I'm realizing that who she was when I first met her was shaped decades before she ever met Doyle, that who she is in life was changed much like my life was. My father tragically died right in front of me, and because of that, I came to rely on a man named Carl Buford. Emily's father disappeared from her life just as instantly, and deliberately, and because of that she made the choices she did in life and came to meet a man named Ian Doyle.

Not being able to handle the distance between us anymore, I stand. I sink to the ground on my knees in front of her, not disrupting the tiller, and press my forehead against her chest. "I'm sorry, Emily," I mutter, not quite sure what else to say.

I feel her lips on my head before she starts speaking again. "There's a little alcove up ahead. We can take down the sails and drop anchor and talk more."

I lean back and watch her for about twenty minutes as she navigates the boat to a quiet place. The sails come down and the boat stills, rocking slightly on the mild waves. All the clouds have broken in the sky and the sun shines brightly. It may be October, but it's plenty warm out here on this boat.

Emily goes below deck and grabs the ice chest. She opens it and displays a feast of sandwiches, fruit, bottled water and beer. "Next time we do this, I'm going to make you fish and we'll only eat what we catch," she says with a wink and a smile, trying to break up some of the sadness and tension.

My quietness is not about shock, nor is it about sadness. It's just that I feel she has a lot more to tell me, and I don't want to break the spell by interjecting my own thoughts and guiding her narrative away from what she was originally planning. So I lean forward and kiss her softly, and then I take a sandwich in my hand. We sit on the floor of the boat, in the relatively small space, our backs against bench seating, facing each other, with her legs resting gently over mine and the food between us.

She smiles at me, her eyes clear and some tears creating a shiny surface on her face where they dried. We eat in companionable silence for a few minutes. She opens two beers and hands me one, then looks down before looking back at me.

"Do you want to find your father?" I ask delicately.

She shrugs and looks back down. "I've had the resources to do that for years, but I can't find him. My mother says she doesn't know where he is, and I'm not sure I believe her, but I don't know what to do about that. I think she would tell me if she got notification that he was dead, which makes me think he's alive. But if he is, he has no record, he doesn't pay taxes in the US or anywhere else I've found."

"Penelope could probably find him if he's out there," I say softly.

She hesitates and then nods. "I know. But then what?"

Her shoulders slump slightly and she takes a bite of her sandwich, chewing slowly. She looks back up. "I learned Italian because I went to an immersion school for a few years in Rome before we moved back to the United States. But I learned French, Arabic and Spanish because wherever we lived, my father insisted upon it. We'd spend hours out on the water, reading to each other in multiple languages. He always told me that to really understand a person, you had to speak his language. I'm not sure my father and I can even come close to speaking the same language now."

I watch her shoulders shake and hear the sob that comes from deep inside her. I put my sandwich down on a napkin and move it to the side. I do the same with hers. I slowly move the ice chest and take our beer bottles and push them to the side as well. I scoot forward and pull her until she's settled in my lap. This puts her head a few inches above me, and she leans forward and places her forehead against mine, sighing.

"I can tell you in multiple languages every constellation in the sky, and tell you every detail of the folklore sailors have about the moon. But I can't tell you or myself or anyone else how to trust someone with his or heart, because I don't know myself. What I can tell you is that you're my full moon, too. My _pleine lune_. You chase the clouds away and have done that for me for a long time, long before I ever could admit it or say it out loud."

Overcome with emotion, it's my turn to swipe at my cheeks. "That's enough," I tell her softly. "You do that for me, too, Emily. You have for a long time, I was just stupid and scared and said nothing until it was too late. I'd never say that I was thankful for this past August, because if I could undo the damage done to so many children, I would. But I'm not sorry that it brought us back together. I still believe that you and me could work out. More than work out. I think we could be phenomenal together."

I watch her smile slightly and feel her arms wrap more tightly around me. Her head moves until her cheek rests against my shoulder, her breath on my neck. "I hoped we could just hold off a couple of months and I'd be okay and you'd never have to know, because I know you and I know how guilt motivates you, and I don't want you to feel guilty, because I'd still do it all again, Derek, to get you back. I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I talked about this yesterday in therapy and I don't want the beginning of us to have secrets, and I want you to know in case it alters your thinking."

I'm confused and my heart is racing at the brokenness of her tone, brokenness tinged with fear. I feel her head lift slightly until her cheek is pressed against mine and her lips are by my ear. She squeezes me firmly. "Kristoff was HIV positive," she says, barely above a whisper, barely audible. "His viral load was almost undetectable when they did his autopsy, and the odds that I'm infected are pretty slim, but there's still that possibility. I talked at length with my doctor in London. You and I used condoms and the odds of you being infected are almost non-existent…"

Her whisper trails off in a shaky breath, and I'm frozen.

I'd packed a lot in my day bag, preparing for every contingency. I'd packed a change of clothes and an extra sweatshirt. I'd packed sunscreen and a hat and extra shoes in case mine got wet. I packed dramamine because my time out on the water has been minimal and I didn't know if I'd feel sick. And I packed condoms, because I wanted to be prepared when the moment that Emily's moratorium on intimacy was lifted, and I didn't know when that would be. I didn't pack the two things I felt like I needed in that moment: A defibrillator and oxygen.

I feel like my heart has stopped and air can't fill my lungs. I'm transported right back onto that stage where I was tied up and helpless and aching from the whipping Emily had just given me. I watched Kristoff fucking her while she pretended to enjoy it. And I'm remembering how - later - he stepped towards her while her focus was back on me, like he was preparing to take her place behind me. And she snarled at him and said, "He's mine," and he backed off with a laugh.

We both went into the undercover assignment with our eyes wide open and the goal of saving several dozen children on our minds. The only reason I'm not in the same boat as she is right now because she did what she said she'd do: She didn't let them touch me.

Her body is trembling in my arms and I say the only truth that's on the forefront of my mind. "I'm not going anywhere, no matter what."

We spent nearly three weeks keeping each other sane and intact by pressing our bodies against each other at night and breathing air into each other, and it's all I want in that moment, with the smell of the bay around us and the sound of the water lapping the sides of the boat. I move my hands under her t-shirt, running my fingers over the smoothness of her skin, and pushing up the soft cotton.

She stiffens and leans back. "We can't do this," she whispers. "Not now. I couldn't live with myself if I…"

I interrupt her thinking with a kiss. For the first time since she came back, I'm not feeling passive at all. I'm taking what I need and giving her what I think she needs. The idea that she might be HIV positive because of everything she did to get me back and save those kids makes my stomach tighten and churn and tears burn in my eyes, but that's in the past, and I can only control the present. We're going to have to deal with this if her tests results are not good in a little over a month, but for right now we don't know.

"I know. That's not what I'm after. We can wait," I whisper back.

Her eyes, full of trust, stare at me and she doesn't object when I lift her shirt off. I pull mine of next. I shift her body and reach for the waistband of her pants and she helps me, undoing the button and lifting her hips as I pull them down and off. Mine are next, and then her bra and our underwear are discarded. I grab our sweatshirts that are on the bench seat near my head and throw them on the floor, then guide her naked body until she's laying down.

There's barely enough room in the V created between the bench seating and the tiller, and we're out here in the open in broad daylight, but we're protected from view by the sides of the boat. I pull her against me and bury my nose against her hair, taking in the scent of her. I kiss her cheek and neck, tasting her tears and the faint hint of sea spray. Her heart is thrumming against my chest and her breathing is hitched, but her arms are around me like she knows this is right, too.

There should be a chapter in the kama sutra about the high level of intimacy two people can achieve just by truths being told, because what I'm feeling in this moment is beyond comparison to any sexual encounter I've ever had, even with Emily.

"It took me thinking you had died to realize how much I loved you, and I'll always regret not telling you the second you came back from Paris," I whisper in her ear.

"The first and only time I wanted to talk about my dad before this was that day in a cemetery, when you told me about your father. I think I knew then that our relationship had the possibility of being very different than anything I'd ever known, and it scared me," she whispers back.

I'm aware of every inch of her body that's pressed against mine as the sun warms us and our shared heat mixes together to form some sort of seal between the two of us, something that feels impenetrable to me.

"Are you scared now?" I ask.

"No," she breathes.

"Your heart is beating so fast," I respond quietly.

She moves her head and lifts it, kissing me softly on the lips. "This finally feels real."

I tighten my arms around her and let the water rock us, finding comfort in the sureness I can feel between the two of us. I smile when her head sinks against my shoulder, and her body relaxes fully against me, and her breath dances across my skin.

"I won't let you go," I say, my eyes closed and my face tilted towards the clear blue sky.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N - We're off tomorrow on a family adventure for six days, and I'm not planning to write during that time. However, I have to drive my son back home on Tuesday for Freshman Orientation (gulp), so I may manage a chapter in there while I'm home and he's learning the ropes of high school. :)_

* * *

 _October 23, 2015_

If someone could take Derek Morgan and put him in pill form, he'd put Ambien out of business. I almost forgot what a good night's sleep felt like in his arms, until I was reminded last Saturday after we went sailing.

We didn't linger naked on the deck of that boat for too long; maybe thirty minutes - thirty minutes where he pillowed my head with his right arm and the fingers of his left skimmed over my body as the sun warmed us. Thirty minutes where he whispered his love for me between feather light kisses on my face. Thirty minutes where he reminded me that the two of us could handle anything together, which we've proven several times over.

I was expecting a tremendous amount of guilt to come crashing to the surface for him if I told him about Kristoff's HIV status. When I mentioned that to him, he said, "Therapy's been good for me. I'm scared for you and I do feel a little guilty, but if our situations were reversed, I would have done the same for you, and I wouldn't want you to feel guilty. So I'm going to try very hard not to."

I lifted my head to look at his face, trailing my hand down his cheek. Living with his guilt was number one on the list of reasons I was trying to keep him at arm's length; not being honest with him from the beginning was a close second. With those two issues dealt with, there was only one right thing to say. "Stay with me?" I whispered to him, surprised that I felt scared - for asking, and his answer.

But he gave me one of his mega-watt smiles. "Always," he whispered back.

We got dressed again and sailed our way back to Annapolis, not because we couldn't have stayed out there longer, but because I think we were both anxious to get back home. I drove him back to his house and went inside while he packed a suitcase and emptied the perishable food in his refrigerator into grocery bags to take with him.

I really looked around the inside for the first time, and realized how half-empty it was. I could almost envision what it must have been like for Derek, to come home from a case at the end of July and find Savannah and half the furniture gone. Not that I wasn't currently happy that she'd left, but I felt a sudden rush of anger towards a woman I'd never met before. And then I realized I hadn't been much better in my life - passively and secretly taking off, or dropping and running when things got too hard.

I was standing in the entry to his living room staring at the space where I'm sure there was once a couch when I felt him come up behind me. His hand was gentle on my back. "Ready?" he asked.

I turned to look him in the eye. "I'll stick this out, Derek. No matter if I get scared or it's hard sometimes. I won't leave you."

It was a monumental promise on my part, and I could tell by his eyes that he didn't quite believe me, but that he wanted to.

"I promise," I tacked on.

He smiled and kissed me. "I promise, too."

"What things in this house make this feel like home to you?" I asked.

He raised his eyebrows and looked around. "My books, some family pictures and that chair and ottoman. The quilt that's on the guest bed upstairs that grandmother made for me when I moved away from Chicago."

I smiled at him. "Then go grab the quilt and pictures, and tomorrow we'll rent a truck and come back for your books and chair."

He looked at the comfortable, worn, brown leather chair in the living room. "It doesn't really go with your furniture."

I took his hand in mine. "Yes, it does."

He grinned and leaned his forehead against mine. "You sure about this?"

"I'm sure I don't want to pretend to want you to go home every night, and I'm sure that we can both figure each other out and give each other space when we need it. Other than that, this is uncharted waters for me, but I think we can navigate them," I said softly.

His smile was huge and his laugh was joyful as it made his breath dance across my face. "Do you think we could move the chair first thing in the morning? That's my football-watching chair and the Bears play tomorrow at one o'clock."

It was my turn to laugh. I leaned my head back and rolled my eyes. "Oh, geez. Is this what I've signed on for?"

His eyebrows raised and his voice was a little uncertain. "Yes?" It was part question and part statement.

I laughed again and squeezed his hand. "OK. I can live with that. I'll make soup and we'll watch football."

And that's exactly what we did on Sunday afternoon. We went and rented a small moving truck first thing Sunday morning, and moved his chair and books to the rowhouse. I started the soup and he fit his books in next to mine on the built-in shelves in the living room. His grandmother's quilt laid over the foot of the bed in the master bedroom. His chair fit right in the living room, almost like the room had been missing a well-loved piece of furniture. His family pictures were interspersed with the few framed pictures I had. And when I came out of the kitchen near half time, after getting the soup in the pot, I noticed that one of his family pictures had changed. He must have dug into one of my photo albums, because a picture of my father and I on a rowboat when I was about five years old now sat in one of his frames on the mantle.

"OK?" he asked when he saw me looking at it.

"Yes," I whispered.

"Your eyes are like his," Derek said softly. "Like they have a story you know you want to listen to."

That one sentence pretty much summed up our start together in that space in Georgetown. Derek let himself start reading me, and I let him. And the reverse was also true. We blended and molded together into something comfortable instantly. We slept together in bed every night like we used to in the estate in Essex, our bodies pressed together and deep sleep claiming us for a solid eight or nine hours a night. We jogged in the mornings and went our separate ways for work.

He took me out to a nice restaurant for my birthday dinner.

"I've been doing a lot of research," he said when we got home that night. "Any risk for me if we used a condom properly and were careful would be statistically insignificant considering the fact that your blood work was clean about a month ago, but I understand that you don't want to take that risk right now, until we know for sure."

I blushed and nodded and he ran his fingers over my pink cheeks. He smiled, but it was not in any deprecating way; after everything we'd done together that that one sentence would make me blush was pretty ironic.

"So, come here," he said as took my hand.

I was perplexed as he lead me to the kitchen and to the sink. He reached into a bag he must have brought home before we went out to dinner and produced a bottle of lemon juice. He held my hands over the sink and squeezed the lemon juice on them and then rubbed the liquid thoroughly over both sides of my hands. "Does anything sting?"

I shook my head, knowing what he was doing. I watched him perform the same procedure on his hands. "No stings for me either," he said as he turned on the water and rinsed his hands. He moved his body behind mine, pressed himself closely against me and held my hands under the warm water, rinsing them off. "There's more than one way to make sure you have a very happy birthday. Neither one of us have even the smallest nicks or cuts on our hands and it's safe, Em."

My body started trembling, not because I didn't believe him or know that it would be safe, but because I was scared. I was scared of his hands touching me even though I knew there was almost no risk at all. I was scared that I'd forever be sick and scared for him and myself and that my body wouldn't be the same again and our intimate relationship would always come with such a high level of caution. I was scared because I could handle it, but I wasn't sure how long I could handle him coping with it.

He turned off the water and grabbed the hand towel on the counter, drying our hands. "In about six weeks, we're going to get tested again, and a week or so after that, we're both going to find out that we're healthy. I believe that, Emily." His lips kissed my neck and moved up to my ear. "But for tonight, this could be enough. It could be good. Okay?"

I slowly nodded my head, and he turned me in his arms. His kiss was certain and comfortable.

I knew I could put a stop to anything at any time, and he'd slam on the brakes. So, I let him kiss me and I kissed him back, my heart hammering and warmth spreading throughout my body. He guided me upstairs to the bedroom and stripped off the dress I'd worn to dinner, his clothes and our undergarments quickly following.

I tried to close my eyes and just feel as his lips and tongue burned a path over my body, as they they skittered over my hips and thighs and never got too near the danger zone. He kept one hand on my chest, measuring the beat of my heart to see how I was doing, because words escaped me. We weren't even really doing that much, but I'd never felt so loved.

When he rolled me over so I was on top of him, I was totally on edge, from nerves and desire, and finally opened my eyes to really looked at him. _Relax. Trust me._ that's what his eyes were telling me. He'd rolled me over so that I didn't feel trapped in any way; I knew that. He moved my hips, softly nudging me so that I was up on my knees, one on each side of his right thigh. "You're beautiful and perfect to me, just as you are," was what he said out loud.

Before the tears that stung my eyes had a chance to gather and form a pool, his hand was between my legs, gentle and instantly touching me in a way that had me gasping for breath. I kept my body balanced on my knees and left arm and reached for him with my right. He groaned and tilted his head back and I kissed his chin before he tipped his head forward again so I could reach his lips.

We were in sync with one another, our bodies moving and our eyes locked on each other, our breathing shaky, but evenly matched. What surprised me in that moment was that I don't think either of us was longing for anything more. Not that more wouldn't have been wonderful, but being able to safely make each other feel good and to be connected in that way again was nirvana, too.

We rose to the peak together and with our lips locked, swallowing each other's moans, we enjoyed the free fall on the other side. I buried my head against his neck and we caught our breath, then he shifted my body again. "Be right back," he said with a kiss on my forehead.

I heard water in the bathroom sink and then he was back a few seconds later, his stomach slightly damp from where he'd cleaned himself up and his hands smelling like soap. He kissed my shoulder and then my lips. "Happy birthday," he whispered. "Next year, when we both know we're healthy, I'm going to totally rock your world on your birthday."

I smiled and wrapped my arms more firmly around him. "You already have," I whispered.

XXXXXXX

My regular therapy days became Tuesday evenings, and that first Tuesday evening Derek was living with me, when I came home, he smiled at me when I walked in the door and really took in my face. "You look like you could use a little space. Do you want to head upstairs for a bit and I'll get dinner started?"

It was that easy with him. He sensed when I needed space and comfort, and I sensed when he needed the same. The days moved forward, and more bits and pieces of Derek's possessions started taking up residence in the rowhouse, much like he was taking up permanent residence in my heart.

He left for a case and was gone for two nights that first week he was with me, and the following Monday - this past Monday - he got his field clearance back. It wasn't too difficult for me to push past my nervousness about him being out in the field again when I saw how happy he was.

But two days ago, he left for a case, and my nerves were on high alert instantly. I made it through last night, with the help of half an ambien, but I still dreamed of fire much of the night. This evening, people in my office cut out a little early to go get drinks after work, and I joined them so as not to seem like the new person who didn't want to be around them. They're nice people, and I managed a single, amicable beer.

After, instead of heading home, I found myself heading to FBI headquarters instead. I showed my Department of Intelligence badge and was given a visitor's badge, and headed up the elevators and straight to Penelope's office.

When I tapped on her door and peeked my head in, she grinned at me, but I could tell she was tense. They'd found the location of the unsub and the team was on their way now. I'd never lived a BAU case from her perspective before, and I realized how my perceptions of Penelope were skewed because of that. The amount of emotional strength she must have inside her to live constantly listening over a speaker to the people she cares about going into dangerous situations is phenomenal.

As far as danger went, this one was relatively mild. I listened to the chatter along with her, though, and kept my ears tuned into Derek's voice, letting out a sigh of relief right along with her when they had the suspect in custody and everyone was safe. Penelope smiled at me and squeezed my hand.

"What brings you here?" she asks me after a few minutes of silence.

"I just wanted to see how the case was going," I reply. But what I'm really looking at are all of her computers.

My phone dings with an incoming text message from Derek. "Safe. We'll fly out late tonight. Keep my side of the bed warm."

I grin and respond back, "I know. I'm with Penelope. I'll definitely keep your side of the bed warm."

Then I look back at the computers while Penelope busies herself with cleaning up from the case.

"How hard is it for a person to just disappear? I mean I know it can be done; Clyde and I essentially made ourselves disappear last August so that our prints and DNA came back to different people. But for the average person who doesn't have those resources, how hard would it be?" I ask quietly, my heart kicking up a notch in my chest.

Penelope sits down in the chair next to me again. "How long are we talking?"

"Thirty years," I respond.

Penelope whistles. "Did the person have prints in the system when he disappeared?"

I nod my head slowly. "Yes." I glance at her and meet her eyes. "My father had appointments as a political attache here and there, so he would have had prints in the system."

Penelope's eyes open wide, and in that moment, I gain another level of trust for Derek Morgan. He could have gone to Penelope and talked to her; he could have asked her to search. It's actually what I could have seen him doing five years ago. Him not going to her was not about passivity; it's about letting me find my own way, and loving me through it.

I blink my eyes quickly and say, "Christopher Prentiss. We were in Rome in the fall of 1985, and he left. In the Spring of 1986, he sold his family's mansion in Duck, North Carolina. It was 1986, and real estate in the area was at a low. He paid off the mortgage and walked away with a little over one hundred thousand dollars from that sale, but that's the last I've been able to find on him. He doesn't pay taxes, he hasn't been arrested. I don't even know if he's in the United States or Europe - or someplace else. He speaks the same languages I do, and he could be anywhere."

Penelope pats my shoulder and doesn't press for more information than that. She turns to her computer and starts typing. I watch as she types and searches and shakes her head. After fifteen minutes of silence, she turns to look at me. "No one survives for thirty years with a hundred thousand dollars. Does he have any other family?"

I shake my head.

"And your mom doesn't know where he is?"

"She says she doesn't, but I'm not sure I believe her. I think she'd tell me if he was dead, though," I say softly.

"There's something else we can try. Do you want to find him, no matter what?" she asks.

I hesitate and then nod my head, not sure what she's thinking of searching. "I'd like to know where he is."

"OK, Emily," she says, turning back to her computer.

I watch her typing and my mother's face appears in the corner of the screen, I see data scrolling quickly by and hear the fast typing of Penelope's fingers across the keyboard.

"Who's Andrew Farley?" she asks me a minute later, and my heart stops.

"He was the maid's son. He and his mom lived in the cottage on the property in Duck when my father was growing up. Andrew was his best friend," I say numbly.

"Your mother's been transferring three thousand dollars a month to Andrew Farley, every month for the past eighteen years."

I stare at the screen, anger rising inside of me and it feels like it's going to explode. Eighteen years! She's known where he was for almost two decades, maybe even before that. I stand quickly and my chair rolls back, hitting the wall with a thud.

"Emily," Penelope calls out to me, but I'm already out the door. I don't bother with the elevator and head towards the stairs, running down to the lobby and out the front doors of headquarters. My hand shakes when I try to get the keys in the ignition of my car, and my phone is ringing in my purse, but I am singularly focused on one destination, and that's my mother's house. She's in Italy right now, but I have a key and I'm going to rip the place apart finding what I need.


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N - Managed to crank this one out in a few hours, but it's not as edited as I'd normally prefer. Time to head back to camp now - and horseback riding, go carts, motor bikes, paintball and lake trampolines. I'm earning major mom points this week! ;-) Another update coming hopefully by Saturday night._

* * *

 _October 26, 2015_

I've second guessed myself several times on the nearly three-hour drive here. When I told Hotch I was taking the day, he merely nodded at me. I didn't ask Penelope's opinion. Emily was willingly letting me into her life and letting me help look out for her best interest, and I felt this was in her best interest, but I couldn't help the little voice in the back of my head that I might be wrong.

The two of us had shared so much with each other over the past few weeks. I told her what it was really like when my father died, sharing the details with another person for the first time. How he whispered and gurgled out he loved me while blood spilled from his lips. How my chest was so tightly pressed against his and I was crying, but I was aware when his breathing completely stopped and the blood ceased pumping out of the gaping bullet wound in his chest. How it took two paramedics and a police officer to pry my screaming, crying body off my father, and when they finally got me to let go, the bloodied pocket of my father's shirt tore away in my hand. How when my mother finally got to me, my shirt was covered in his blood and I was still clutching that pocket. How I didn't speak for nearly two weeks after he died, like the screaming over his dead body had rendered me mute.

In turn, she told me about what her life was like after her father left. How her mother was cold and no-nonsense about it, telling her she needed to move on. How she turned to the comfort of a friend and was so sad that she didn't even think about how irresponsible and risky her actions were, until a few weeks later when she found out she was pregnant. How her abortion had altered who she was and how she related to the world, no longer open and loving like her father, but closed off like her mother. How she told Rossi about her abortion when Matthew died; she wanted to tell me, but my opinion of her mattered the most and she couldn't bring herself to do it.

Every night I was home, we ate dinner together, or went out with all or some of the team. And after, we'd sit together on the couch or on the balcony of the rowhouse and share something that we'd always held behind thick walls of privacy, either because it was too sad or we felt it was too shameful. And then we'd make our way up to bed, strip off our clothes and hold onto each other, healing one another with our hands and whispered words; taking what we once felt was broken inside us and glueing it back together with the help of the other.

I never knew life, or a relationship, could be like this. Both of us wondered what it would be like when we had no secrets left to tell each other; both of us imagined something magnificent and strong and loving.

But last Friday night, and this past weekend, was difficult and emotionally exhausting. Hotch must have seen the desperate look on my face after I received Garcia's call while we were still in Fort Lauderdale, because he got us out of the precinct and on the jet quickly.

"What is it?" he asked me, once the plane was in the air.

I stared at him and shook my head. "It's not my story to tell, but I need to get Logan Circle as fast as possible."

His eyes flashed in recognition. "That's where Emily's mother lives."

I nodded once. "Yes, but Elizabeth Prentiss is in Italy until November."

He didn't ask anymore questions. Garcia, meanwhile, was texting me a steady stream of information and asking me if I wanted her to go to Emily. "No," I texted back. "Just let me know if she leaves there."

"If she'd just waited a few minutes, I could have given her all the information she needed," Garcia texted back.

"She knows that. She's looking for the 'Why?'" I replied. Instinctively, I knew that's what Emily was doing. She knew Garcia could get Andrew Farley's contact information; she wanted to know how this all came about and she didn't trust her mother to tell her the truth. I didn't blame her.

The two hour flight seemed endless, and at one point JJ got up and sat across from me. She didn't ask what was going on, but she did put her hand on my shaking knee. "We're back to this, are we?" she asked.

"She'll be okay," I responded, more to myself than JJ. The fact was, I trusted Emily to stay put, as long as something didn't push her over the edge. And then I just didn't know what she'd do.

JJ smiled at me. "I've never seen her happier, Derek. She _will_ be okay."

I managed a small smile at that.

When we landed at the airfield, Hotch put me in a Bureau vehicle with him and turned on the lights, heading in the direction of Logan Circle; I didn't hesitate too much - I didn't want to waste the precious minutes getting my car from headquarters, and I didn't want to deal with cabs at nearly eleven o'clock on a Friday night.

When we arrived at Elizabeth's home, he got out of the vehicle with me and we approached the front door. It was unlocked, and upon opening the door, we both took in the scene - a foyer and living room that looked like a tsunami had made its way through it, and the faint smell of cigarette smoke coming from somewhere upstairs.

I took the stairs quietly, Hotch following, and called out, "Emily?"

Her shuddering breath could be heard clearly in the otherwise silent house. When we got to the den, it looked worse than the downstairs, with a file cabinet open, papers everywhere and books torn off the shelf. And Emily sitting on the floor in the corner, a lit cigarette in her left hand, a box of Gauloises cigarettes near her feet, and an unfolded piece of paper in her right hand.

I'm not sure she noticed Hotch, and if she did, she didn't care. Her tear-stained face lifted towards me. "I went through the whole place and found copies of her taxes. She lists Andrew Farley as her Personal Assistant. He must pay taxes on the money she sends to him. Then I realized I hadn't found my mother's secret stash of French cigarettes - her one vice that she occasionally uses when things are stressful. I stole a lot of them when I was a teenager." She took a drag off the cigarette and coughed. "There was a hidden compartment beneath her office desk. I couldn't find the key," she whispered.

I glanced at the desk and saw a smashed drawer that she'd apparently banged against the corner of the desk until it busted open. I also noticed for the first time the cut on her left hand.

I stepped in and knelt in front of her, reaching for the cigarette, which she let me take. I didn't know where to put it, but Hotch's hand was there in an instant, taking it from me, opening the window, and flicking it outside.

I reached towards Emily's bloodied hand and she pulled it back quickly. "Don't," she whispered. "We've been so careful. No need to blow it now just because I completely lost it."

She glanced at Hotch when she said that, looking like she regretted it, then she cleared her throat and started reading.

 _April 10, 1996_

 _Elizabeth,_

 _This is Andrew Farley. I know I haven't seen you in well over two decades, but I'm writing because in the spring of 1986, Chris found me. He sold his family's home in North Carolina and bought a fishing boat. He was not well, even back then._

 _He muddled through for about ten years, fishing and selling his catch and using up the money he had until it ran out. I've been doing my best to support him, but the reality is that he's drinking more than I can afford. I am a groundskeeper at a home in Delaware now, and I can let him keep his boat at the dock here when the family who owns the property is away, but I can't otherwise._

 _I've tried to help him as best I can, and have been successful getting him sober a few times, but it never lasts long. He is a broken man and takes solace in alcohol. While I've encouraged him to seek a legal divorce and reclaim his portion of the inheritance that is rightfully his, he refuses. He says that he'd rather not resurface in order to pursue things legally._

 _So I am reaching out to you in hopes that you can provide financial assistance. In absence of that, I fear Chris will become homeless, and ultimately arrested. I know you, and I know you'd prefer to avoid that embarrassment. He lives on his boat, and doesn't need much, but he needs more than I can provide for him._

 _It is of utmost importance to him that Emily never find him; he's ashamed of how he is now. So any money you are willing to provide can be filtered through me, and we can figure out a legal way to do that._

 _He's an alcoholic - sick and depressed and I can't fix it for him, but I can make sure that he has food and basic needs. I owe him that, and I know you'll see you owe him that as well. After all, it was you who demanded he leave under the threat of something heinous. You knew Chris never laid an inappropriate hand on Emily, but that's what you told him you'd claim if he left and tried to take Emily with him. He didn't want to put her through that battle, and you wore him down. Congratulations - you broke someone who was once a fine, gentle, kind man._

 _I live simply, but I'm not stupid. I know you would have never followed through on that threat because that sort of negative publicity would not have settled well with you. But he was too afraid for his daughter and her well-being to risk it. I have no words for who you are as a mother and wife, or even as a human being, but I will say that it's a good thing you mostly live on a different continent than I, and that Chris simply wants to be forgotten and left alone._

 _Please contact me as soon as you receive this letter. I have letters Chris sent me throughout the years, and I know who you are and every detail of what lead up to him leaving. I trust you will do what I'm asking of you if you'd rather those letters not become public knowledge. I've enclosed my contact information._

 _Andrew_

Emily put the letter on the ground and started sobbing. "I decided to try and find him, and ended up losing both of my parents. My mother wasn't much, but I didn't think she was like that."

Her phone rang then and I glanced at it, where it lay on the ground beside her. "Mom," said the caller ID.

Emily hit the "Decline" button. "I texted her a picture of me with the letter," she said. "She's been calling constantly since then."

I reached for her uncut hand and crawled towards her, leaning my forehead against the top of her tipped head, my tears for the woman I loved so much falling into her hair. "I'm sorry, Emily. I'm so sorry. Andrew Farley lives outside Millboro, Delaware. It's just about two and a half hours away by car, and we can drive there if you want. Or you might choose over time to let your father go. Whatever you want to do, I'll be here for you. But your hand looks like it needs stitches, Baby. I love you, but we need to get you taken care of, and I think we need to get out of here."

Keeping her bloodied hand fisted and down by her side, she wrapped her other arm around my neck and nodded her head. I stripped off my long sleeve t-shirt, leaving me in an undershirt. I handed it to her and she wrapped up her hand. I moved to stand and pulled her up with me. I picked up her phone and the letter, folding it, and putting both in my back pocket.

She seemed oblivious to Hotch's presence at that point, but I glanced at him, and he was blinking back tears, too, the pieces of who Emily Prentiss was as a person coming together and clicking into place for him in some small ways as well. I watched him glance at her hand and a pained look cross his face, like he'd figured something else out as well. I shook my head at him slightly and he nodded at me just as slightly.

We left the mess - the papers and the broken drawer and the banged up desk and Emily's blood on the carpet - we walked away from it all. This was Elizabeth's mess, and she could clean it up and wallow in it.

I reached into Emily's pocket and took out her keys. We locked the door behind us and Hotch quietly headed to the Suburban double-parked on the street, lights still flashing, while I walked Emily towards her car. We went to a clinic and had her hand stitched up, and then we drove home. She was silent through the whole thing, but when we got home and I got her upstairs into bed and tried to hand her an Ambien, she shook her head. "You're enough," she said. The first two words she'd spoken in nearly two hours.

So I fell into bed beside her and wrapped her in my arms while my heart fluttered in anger and sadness and uncertainty, but we both found sleep. The next morning she was up early, around six o'clock, and when I blinked open my eyes, she asked, "Can we go?"

I didn't ask her if she was sure, because I could tell by her eyes that she was, but I was seized by worry for her. We both dressed quickly and drove towards Delaware, arriving at Andrew Farley's address a little after nine o'clock in the morning.

We found him behind the large house, trimming back plants in preparation for the impending winter.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

I glanced at Emily, whose eyes were masked by dark sunglasses, and took out my badge. "Agent Derek Morgan," I said.

"And how can I help the FBI?" the man replied pleasantly. He was in his seventies, the same age as Emily's father, and his hands were calloused and his skin tanned and wrinkled, like he's spent his life outside. But his glassy blue eyes were kind.

At that point Emily lifted her sunglasses on her forehead and said, "We're looking for Christopher Prentiss."

Andrew quickly looked down. "Haven't heard that name since I was in my twenties," he said while he got back on his knees and went back to trimming his rose bushes."

Emily bristled, "I know that's not true. Don't lie to me. I'm…"

Andrew stood quicker than I thought a man of his age could possibly stand, stepping forward towards Emily. "I know who you are, girl. Your eyes are just like his used to be. It's best to forget about your father. You don't want to see him."

Just then, the sound of a bell on a boat could be heard a ways in the distance, beyond a small cottage and a copse of maple trees. Emily took off towards the sound and I ran after her, glancing back to see Andrew shaking his head sadly.

I was about three steps behind Emily when she hit the boat dock, and I could see a shirtless man standing in a boat, gray stringy hair pulled back in a pony tail and leathered skin. Emily stopped short, and I stopped behind her.

I think we were both seeing the same thing. It _was_ her father. There was no doubt in my mind after the pictures I'd seen of him, but gone was the distinguished, handsome man with gentle eyes that sparkled with a story. This man had yellowed eyeballs, and a yellow tone to his skin, like his liver was no longer working properly. From a couple of feet away, I could smell that he hadn't bathed in at least several days. His rough hands had yellowed and brown fingernails. He was working over a fish, gutting it with a sharp knife.

I instinctively reached for Emily's hand while she whispered, "Daddy?"

He startled and stared at her. "Ain't never been anyone's Daddy," he said gruffly, recovering quickly.

"Christopher Prentiss," Emily said firmly, not deterred. "It's me. It's Emily."

I watched the man stumble slightly, though I'm not sure if it was because Emily was right there or because he was already drunk; we'd inched closer and I could smell the unmistakable scent of alcohol in the air.

"Don't know no Emilys," he said, slightly slurred.

I watched Emily crumble, her knees giving slightly, and I put my arm around her.

"Daddy," she said again, brokenly.

"Told you I ain't never been anyone's Daddy. Now get out of here," he said, just as gruffly, but in a more menacing tone, his knife slightly raised.

Emily completely lost it then, and I had to half carry, half drag her back down the dock, while I shushed her, and told her I loved her and it was going to be okay, which was so trite, but I was nearly as shocked as she was. The desire to want to go back and beat the crap of the man who was on that boat, the one who was once her father and had become someone else, was just there under the surface.

"What do you want to do?" I whispered helplessly.

She clutched her arm around me, her head against my shoulder. "Just take me home," she sobbed.

We made our way through the trees, up behind the cottage and to the grounds of the main house again. Andrew was standing there, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, girl," he said. "But I warned you."

I kept Emily moving towards the car and opened the passenger door, getting her seated and placing a seatbelt around her inconsolable body. I wiped her tears and kissed her cheek, then closed her door and got in the other side. She didn't speak the whole drive home. I watched her cry until she fell into an exhausted sleep.

We spent a quiet remainder of Saturday at home and slept late together on Sunday - or she slept late, and I kept vigil with her in my arms.

I tried to talk to her about it on Sunday, and she nodded or shook her head. I tried to talk to her about other things, and she gave short replies. We went for a walk together, and she wasn't running away or shutting herself off exactly, but she was different. "It's just like mourning the loss of someone who's died," she finally said on Sunday evening. "I lost both my parents this weekend."

I had no love lost for Elizabeth Prentiss, but there was something about Christopher Prentiss's eyes that made me think he wasn't so far gone as he was pretending to be. He was just scared as hell, and lost in a fog of depression-induced alcohol. He was seventy-three years old, and if his skin was any indication, he likely didn't have that much time left.

Emily stayed right there with me on Sunday night, mentally present, physically wrapped around me, and emotionally sad and exhausted. But she got up on Monday morning to get ready for work with a slight smile on her face. "Thank you for being you," she said to me as she left for work. "I love you, Derek Morgan."

So it was a triumph in a lot of ways, for her. She'd walked through fire and didn't run away from me, but I still was thinking about her father's face, about that brief flinch of recognition tinged with sadness before he put a mask on.

I went to work on Monday morning and immediately told Hotch I was taking the day and going to Delaware, and he only nodded. "Whatever you need."

I'm not sure if my spontaneous drive to Delaware is going to weaken or strengthen Emily and I, but I'm thinking the latter. Because I will tell her I went, no matter what happens, but I just feel like someone other than her speaking to her father might be better.

I arrive at the beach-front mansion a little before eleven o'clock in the morning. I don't know if Andrew Farley sees me as I make my way past the big house, past his cottage, and to the small dock that houses a fishing boat that looks deserted; if he does he doesn't come outside to try and stop me.

I almost turn back and decide to talk to Andrew instead, but keep slowly walking forward. All is quiet on the boat, and I'm thinking Chris isn't there. I gently step from the dock onto the boat and make my way towards the cabin door. I peek inside and see him passed out on a small bench, surrounded by empty bottles of cheap vodka. But it's not him or those bottles that make me boldly open the door; it's what I see hanging on the walls of that cabin.

I step inside and am accosted by the overpowering smell of an unwashed body, alcohol and fish. On the walls, there are newspaper clippings and a few photographs - one of Emily taken at a very great distance at her high school graduation, and another of Emily taken at her college graduation from a bit closer. The rest are newspaper clippings, some pictures of her from when she was with the BAU, and many more from when she was with Interpol, from international newspapers. The most recent are many clippings from the case this past August. In the corner is a stack of international papers.

Tears fill my eyes and I move forward and shake Chris's shoulder, but he only snores more loudly without waking at all. I grab a scrap of paper and search for a pen, finding one on the counter. I leave my name and contact information and a note - _If you can manage to clean up a bit, Emily would love to talk to you. She's not mad at you, and she's not disappointed in you, only sad that you became like this. She loves you very much and misses you. The ship in the bottle you left her is on our mantle and she's been talking about you a lot lately. Call me if you think you can handle it. I hope you can. I lost my father when I was almost ten years old; he was murdered right in front of me. I never got a real chance to say goodbye. Don't miss out on your chance in the time you have left on this planet._

I take the paper and pin it to the wall over the most recent article on the wall featuring Emily's picture.

I quietly make my way off the boat and onto the deck. Andrew is waiting for me at the end. "So now you know," he said.

I nod, not sure what to say.

He produces a stack of letters and hands them to me. "I intended to get these to Emily when he died, but I haven't stopped thinking about her face since Saturday. These are letters he wrote me after Emily was born, and most of them are about her and how much he loved being a father."

"I left him a note, but will you try to talk to him?" I ask as I take the stack of about fifty letters.

Andrew hesitates and then nods his head. "I'm not sure what I can do. The last time I was able to get him sober for more than a few days, it was for her college graduation. He was there; her mother wasn't."

I nod my head, not sure how to respond. I head back towards my car, get in, and start the drive towards home. I'm not going to return to headquarters; I intend to be there when Emily gets home this evening, to give her the letters and sit beside her while she reads them. It's not her father in person, but it's something tangible so she might know just how much she was loved as a child by her father, no matter what kind of a mess he is now.


	7. Chapter 7

_November 1, 2015_

 _Dear Andrew,_

 _Do you remember all those years we spent out on the ocean learning about the moon and stars, finding Captain Jim and listening to his stories about the sea? It was the fall of 1953 when Jim first started telling us about the moon, when we were just eleven years old. But it was your mother who told us about the Harvest Moon, about what it meant to her parents, who were farmers._

 _When I learned that Elizabeth's due date was on the harvest moon in 1970, I knew something special was coming. Though Emily was born two weeks late, I still got something so wonderfully exceptional, I knew that your mother was right - the crop that was inside my heart grew to an abundance never known before that day. She was all eyes and wiry limbs; she cried when she was first born, and she cried when Elizabeth held her, but when she was placed in my arms, she quieted immediately. Her pink lips settled into a slight upturn that could be mistaken for a smile, a look I've seen on my own face when I'm contemplating something pleasant, and her eyes found their mirror image, staring right at mine._

 _I write this letter with heavy heart. It's September 17, 1985, and I'm about to board my sailboat with a suitcase and five thousand dollars, and I'm leaving my baby girl behind. For the first time since we were children, I have not tracked the date of the Harvest Moon, so it surprised me when the sun set and that orange, full moon appeared in the sky. It burns brightly tonight, almost like Emily is beckoning me home, but I can't go there._

 _Elizabeth has twisted what was once so innocent into something grotesque. Her questions of, "How did Emily bathe on the boat?" and "Did you see her naked?" have me confused in my own mind. Was it wrong to help wash my teenage daughter's hair off the side of the boat? Is it horrible that she was young and innocent and still felt like a child and she changed in front of me? Am I some monster because on cold nights on the boat between France and Italy, our pajama-clad bodies in separate sleeping bags helped warm each other in the same bed?_

 _I never questioned those things until Elizabeth did, and now I'm such a jumble of uncertainty and fear. I can see court appearances, and Elizabeth with her family history in Europe, and Emily being made to testify and her being confused, too. I don't want her memories of me to be twisted into something distorted like I'm currently questioning my own memories. I want her to remember me as the father who loved her, who was happy and ready with a smile, who could chase her tears away with a joke or a story about the sea. I want her to remember me as someone who loved her, but abandoned her. It's terrible to see that as better than my alternative, but it's true._

 _My alternative is that she questions the love I always had for her, that she questions my morality, and that I end up without her anyway._

 _So I'm sailing away. My body is weak, and my mind is haunted, and I've not stopped crying for nearly a day now. Tonight, I shall drink to my farewell with the other sailors in Fiumicino, and tomorrow morning, I will set out to sea. I know not what the future holds for me, and I don't care. I only hope that Emily takes what I've taught her about life and love and happiness and manages, over time, to carry it with her into her own future._

 _I hope to see you again someday._

 _With a broken heart,  
Chris_

That was the last letter my father wrote to Andrew Farley, and the most telling. Though the other letters Derek gave me were full of details about how much my father loved me and cherished my milestones, they all lead up to that moment over the course of fifteen years. The spiraling depression that was obvious in his letters started about a year before he left us, when he first started talking to my mother about a divorce.

I'm a rational person, and I can be a profiler when I'm calm, even about personal matters. That there was something that caused my mother to question only the most innocent, loving gestures on the part of my father was obvious to me simply because no sane person just comes up with that out of the blue. The whys, when I discussed them with Derek, boiled down to two things: Either she really couldn't imagine a father and daughter being so close after her own cold upbringing with her father, and that was the only reason why she could see my father having a strong relationship with me; or something similar happened to her when she was a young girl with her own father.

I'm not that interested in finding out the answers just now, and I'm not sure I'll ever be. She's called several times, and sent me an email. She informed me a few days ago via a voicemail message that she was flying home early from Italy and she'd like to see me. I've ignored her.

They say time heals all wounds and while I have significant proof of this being true when it comes to physical injuries, this is the first time I've actually stuck around long enough to let myself try to heal from an emotional wound. In the past, I've shut down or I've taken off or combined the two.

I've been riding an emotional roller coaster the past six days - calm at work, but angry or tearful or just quiet when I'm home in the evenings. When I felt like I was crying too much, I apologized to Derek. When I tried to distract myself on Wednesday night by breaking into one of Clyde's cookbooks and making a nice dinner, I burned it and angrily threw the pan and the charred food into the sink, and I apologized again.

Derek simply hugged me and told me I had nothing to apologize for, that being human and letting my feelings out only made him love me more.

I really don't know how I got so lucky as to have a man like Derek Morgan love me; what I do know for certain is that the loss of the past week is not as acute for me as it could be, because I have so much now. I'm not alone or walling myself off from the world, I haven't thought once about my passport or a standing invitation from Interpol that I could return any time I wanted. I haven't stopped going to therapy, and I haven't stopped talking to Derek. I've realized I do have a strong, healthy family, in the form of Derek Morgan and five other members of the BAU. I was reminded of that last Tuesday, when Hotch showed up at my office with coffee in the morning to check in on me, and when Rossi and Reid showed up that same day with lunch. I'm reminded of that daily with sweet, funny texts I receive from Garcia and in phone calls from JJ.

And no matter how I'm feeling after work, when Derek walks in the door, or if he's already home before I get there, my heart skips a beat just seeing his face, like I still can't believe he's there, right beside me and sticking with me through all of this. Or that I'm sticking with him.

This past Friday, JJ stopped by my office at lunch. She brought take-out and we talked mostly about work. She invited Derek and I over to her house for Halloween. "The boys can take Henry out Trick or Treating, and you and I can get get a chance to talk, if you want. I know you and Penelope spent a lot of time together in August, but I'm also thinking that you perceive her as more Derek's friend than yours. I know what it feels like to need more of an outlet than your spouse, and I'm here for you."

I raised my eyebrows at the word "spouse" and she laughed. "You know what I mean. So do you guys want to come over?"

That was how I ended up on JJ's couch last night, facing her with a bowl of candy between us. It surprised me how easy it was to talk with her, once I let myself, like no time at all had passed between us. She told me about how difficult the past couple of years had been for her, and I told her about the night with Derek after her wedding, about leaving anyway, about Clyde and about how I'd given him the cyanide pill so he could end his life on his terms. And, finally, I told her about my father and my mother. We both did a good job blinking back tears before we laughed at each other and just let them flow.

Our conversations were interrupted by the doorbell ringing and adorable kids in costumes, and those interruptions provided an emotional pause that allowed me to gather myself and not fall completely apart. Right before Derek and Will were set to return with Henry, JJ said, "Emily, I've seen you talk your way around the defenses of hardened sociopaths."

"And?" I asked.

She sat up on the couch and moved the bowl of candy, scooting closer to me and putting an arm around my shoulder. "And Derek is trying to protect you and follow your lead for the most part, and Penelope is calling you on your bullshit, but I know you. You're in this strange place where you're letting people in, and I think it's wonderful and amazing, but that doesn't mean you have to let independent, strong, Emily go entirely. If you want to get through to your father, I think you can find a way."

I hugged her around the large bulge in her stomach and rolled her words over in my mind.

I thought about those words last night as I fell asleep in Derek's arms. And I thought about them after I was woken up by Derek's ringing cell phone, pulling him away on a case. I thought about them after he kissed me goodbye, and I thought about them when I was having a cup of coffee out on the balcony as dawn broke over the Potomac.

Those words were what prompted me to pack a small bag and grab a blanket. They're what drove me to my car and onto the freeway and landed me in Delaware by nine o'clock this Sunday morning.

When I arrive, I look for cars in the driveway, but there are none, so I don't think the family who owns this property is there. I grab my blanket and bag and head past the main house and past the cottage, through the trees and onto the boat dock.

All is quiet on my father's boat. I spread out the blanket on the dock and pull a book from my bag. And I wait, pretending to read. At one point Andrew comes to the edge of the dock and stares at me, but eventually turns away. It's near eleven in the morning when my father emerges from the cabin, looking far cleaner than he was the last time I saw him.

He sees me and grunts and turns around to go back into the cabin, but he leaves the door open.

"It feels weird to call you 'Daddy' when I'm forty-five years old, but I think you'll always be that to me, never just 'Dad'," I say loud enough for him to hear. "Andrew gave Derek the letters you wrote him over the years, and I read them. Derek was the man who was with me last weekend, and he came back and saw the inside of your boat and left you a note. He's my soul mate, though I've never believed in things like that before, but I do now. We were destined for each other, I think."

I feel my face flush at that admission, but it also makes me smile slightly and it calms my nerves.

He emerges from the boat with a couple of fish and a knife, and I open my bag, pulling out a sandwich and unwrapping it. "You never did anything wrong, Daddy. Not once. You only made me feel safe and loved and there was nothing inappropriate in your actions. But I can understand how you started second guessing yourself. I can't pretend to understand why you ran away without talking to me or giving me a chance or a choice, and I can't understand why you never contacted me once I was an adult. But I love you, and I always have."

It's taking everything in me to not break down and cry, but I know an emotional outburst might not get the results I want. So I bite my cheek and keep my tears in check, barely glancing at his face. There's heavy breathing, but that's about all I can hear besides the water gently lapping on the sides of the boat and birds in the trees.

"I bought a sailboat," I say. "Just a few weeks ago. I've only been out on the water a couple of times, but I knew if I was going to get on with my life and move forward into a good place, I needed to deal with you leaving and what that did to me. So I went back to the water to try and find myself again, and find you within me. It's working."

I sense that he's stilled and risk looking up. There are tears streaming down his wrinkled, leathery face, and he's staring right at me. I take a deep breath and continue, "Derek says that you have pictures of me up on the wall of your cabin, mostly newspaper clippings. That's only a small piece of me, though, my career and the cases I've worked on. The real me was hurt and scared for a very long time, of relationships or being close to people in general. I don't trust easily, but I'm learning."

I pause and bite my sandwich again, brushing the tears off my cheeks with one hand as I do so. I tip my head down so he doesn't feel like I'm staring at him, and then I'm aware of the dock moving slightly, a weight placed on it. There's a foot in a worn sneaker near my hip and a knife under my nose, held in a wrinkled hand littered with sun spots.

"You remember how to clean a fish?" The voice is gruff and slightly slurred, but gentle at the same time, and my heart skitters around in my chest for a few seconds before I take the knife and nod.

I place my sandwich to the side and step onto the boat. The fish are on a cutting board, and I start descaling them first, miraculously with the practiced hands of a surgeon when I haven't done this in over thirty years. I cut under the gill and then cut from the tail to the head and remove the guts. It's when I'm doing this with the second fish that my father's hand appears and moves slowly over my knife hand.

I still my movements and let the knife go. I wipe my hands on my jeans.

"I never wanted my leaving to make you not trust people. I didn't think it through that far into the future. I just knew I needed to leave, and I couldn't imagine what your mother would drag you through if I tried to take you with me. By the time you were an adult, I was a long way away from the man you once knew. I wanted you to have the memories of how I used to be; I never wanted you to see me like this," my father whispers in my ear his voice thick with tears.

I nod. "I know," I whisper back.

I watch his hands as they shake, and I know it's not from fear. I know it's because I've kept him from his morning drink. He's seventy-four years old and withdrawal from the amount of alcohol he's consumed for years could kill him without medical help. I step away from him and enter the cabin of the boat. I don't linger over the pictures of me on the wall; I grab the first bottle of vodka I see that has liquid in it and emerge, handing it to him.

He looks ashamed, his eyes downcast, but he unscrews the lid and takes a healthy gulp. "Une personne rencontre souvent son destin sur la route, il a pris de l'éviter," his voice cracks while looking right at me.

"Jean de La Fontaine," I reply with a small smile and tears in my eyes. "A _person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it._ Believe me, I can understand that sentiment. I've been living it the past few months."

And my father laughs. It's the most familiar thing about him so far, and when I hear it, I know him again. But I know him more a second later when his arms wrap around me. He smells like alcohol and soap and the sea, his hair is stringy and his body is a combination of loose skin and hard muscle. I know his touch, though, and what his hugs feel like. I laugh and sob and wrap my arms around him.

"I'm ashamed," he says after several minutes. "I don't know how to stop feeling like that."

His arms release me and he steps back. I watch him take another gulp of vodka and nod my head. "I understand. I don't know what would make you stop feeling that way. You have to find that within yourself, if you can."

His eyes with yellow surrounding a dark grey that was once deep brown search my face. "Lune, I love you. But I need you to go now. I need to think. I don't know if there's a way back from this, and it has nothing to do with you. I'd turn the world on its axis if I could to make you feel better, but I don't know if I can go back and change myself. I'm nearly out of time."

I sob and nod my head. "What if I'm okay with you just as you are?"

"It means you're the same kind, loving girl I left in Italy, but it doesn't mean I can come to terms with me as I am. I'm going to set out to sea and think. It's all I know."

I nod and watch as his hands reach forward and squeeze mine. I feel his chapped lips on my forehead. "Never was there a brighter soul born in this universe than the moment you were born, Lune."

He guides my body off his boat and back onto the dock. I stand there and watch as he releases the boat from the horn cleats on the dock and starts the engine. I watch as the boat moves slowly away from me, and I sit back down on my blanket. I stare out at the water until I can't see his boat at all anymore.

I'm not sure if this is better or worse - having him acknowledge me and then drift away again.

* * *

 _November 23, 2015_

"Do you know what five minutes really feels like?"

My sister asked me that once when she was practicing for a speech in one of her high school classes. I was eleven years old - post my dad dying, but before Carl Buford came into the picture.

I was sitting on arm of our sofa and nodded. "Sure I do!"

"OK then, smarty pants. You just sit there and tell me when you think it's been five minutes."

I remember counting for two minutes. I got to about one-hundred-twenty-five when I scratched a mosquito bite on my ankle and lost track of time. When I told my sister that I thought five minutes was up, she informed me it had only been a little over three minutes.

But I'm not losing track of time now. The clock in the doctor's office is ticking, second by second and I'm entirely focused on counting. It's taking forever.

It's been a rough few weeks, but a good few weeks, too. We're not sure where Emily's father is, but after her initial sadness that he left again, she feels better for having talked to him; she has more of him now than she had before and it's settled her in a lot of ways.

Her mom still calls, and she's even shown up once at our door, but Emily didn't want to talk to her, and I sent a tearful Elizabeth Prentiss away.

We are a conundrum of settled and unsettled.

" _My mom invited us to Chicago for Thanksgiving,"_ I said a couple of weeks ago.

" _Absolutely. Let's go,"_ Emily responded with a smile.

" _Garcia says she could track your father's boat if you want,"_ I said around the same time.

" _No. Let him go,"_ she said. " _He'll come back if he can."_

Right and wrong and what would be good for Emily or bad for Emily has all become muddied. What I do know is that she's sticking with me, that she's talking freely, and that she loves me. But I'm insecure with her sometimes. Last week, she had an issue come up at work that was stressful - a terrorist situation in Hamburg had Defense Intelligence on high alert, and for the first time, Emily had to put her ability to orchestrate the media and draft clear communications to her supervisor and the Secretary of Defense to use. That was just a day after her mother showed up at our place, and I was called away on a case at the same time.

I was afraid I was going to get back home the next day and she might possibly be gone, but she was still there, waiting for me when I got home, with dinner on the stove and a smile on her face. She knows her leaving is my biggest fear; and I know me giving up on her is her biggest fear. And in the middle of that fear we're trying to find our footing with each other.

"Given your histories, it will take time," my therapist tells me, and I know Emily's therapist has shared the same sentiments. So we talk about it and we're gentle and honest with each other. We say what's on our minds, and our relationship is stronger for it.

I've never had a relationship with someone who so completely understands my job and understands me. I've never felt the guilt-free kiss of a woman who smiles at me and tells me to stay safe and call when I can, as I'm pulled away from bed in the early hours of the morning because of a case. I'm not sure if it's that or therapy or the case in August or a combination of all three that keeps me dedicated to a job that I no longer feel as compelled by. I'm not sure what that means or how it will settle in the future, but I'm beginning to believe that I'm not totally on the right path anymore, career-wise. Emily and I talk about it, and I'm uncertain of what I'm looking for. All I know is that the adrenaline rush I used to feel at the prospect of a new case is barely there anymore.

But today feels different. Today feels like a crossroads of sorts, personally. It's just two days until we leave for Chicago for Thanksgiving, and we both took half days from work. Hotch knows where we are; he put two and two together that night in Elizabeth's home and knows that the possibility of HIV infection is very real for Emily, and less-so for me, but still there. Emily simply said she had a doctor's appointment and would work the rest of the day from home.

We both went to Emily's doctor's office during lunch. Dr. Craig was Emily's doctor when Emily worked for the BAU, and Emily had contacted her when she returned and filled her in on what was going on, enough so her doctor got the big picture and was willing to be flexible and discreet with us. Dr. Craig kept her office open at lunch and we quietly went together into an exam room in an otherwise deserted section of the building.

We've done the research and know these results are just as good as the results from blood work that takes longer to read. We both know we could do this at home, but Emily felt more comfortable with a medical professional administering the test.

It's been three months and two days since Emily's last sexual encounter with Kristoff or anyone involved in the case last August. These tests are going to be accurate, and our results will be known in twenty minutes.

Neither of us is looking at the test strips sitting across from us. We're both sitting on the papered bed in the exam room, our hands clasped together, our heads leaning against the wall, and our eyes closed, and I'm counting the ticks on the wall clock that seem so slow it's almost as if time is standing still.

I've no doubt that where we ultimately end up will depend on these test results - it's the difference between a guilt-free future for both of us, or one laden with regret and uncertainty and carefully-measured intimacy that might tear us apart.

 _One thousand one hundred ninety-six, One thousand one hundred ninety-seven,_ I count in my mind as Emily's fingers clasp mine tightly.

Dr. Craig re-enters the room just as the beeper goes off on her timer and we open our eyes. "Both negative," Dr. Craig tells us with a smile on her face.

I let out a breath and squeeze Emily's hand harder, but Emily sobs. "Are you sure?" she asks.

The doctor nods, but Emily shakes her head. "Can you do it one more time, just to be certain?" she cries.

It's in that moment that I realize just how heavily this has been weighing her down. "Em," I whisper, wanting to just celebrate the moment, but her eyes are only on her doctor.

Dr. Craig smiles understandingly. "We can do a finger prick this time, instead of an oral swab, just so you have the results from two sources."

Emily nods and Dr. Craig leaves the room, returning a few moments later with a new, sealed testing kit. Instead of having Emily run the swab over her gums, Dr. Craig puts on gloves, cleans Emily's finger with a wipe, and pricks the tip, collecting a small drop of blood. We watch her stir the blood into the testing solution and push the testing device inside. She sets the timer again, pats Emily's leg and exits the room.

We wait again, and I count again, this time with my arms around her and my lips buried against her neck. Her heartbeat is about double-time of the clock, racing in nerves. And it's those beats I tally while I hold her, staying quiet. Twenty minutes later, Dr. Craig returns and confirms that there are absolutely no HIV antibodies in Emily's system.

She doesn't eye the doctor this time - she buries her head in my shoulder and squeezes her arms around me and cries in relief. We thank Dr. Craig and exit the clinic and I get Emily into the car. She's silent on the short drive until we park at home. Her hand reaches out to touch mine.

"I'm scared out of my mind," she whispers.

"Why?" I ask, even though I think I know the answer.

She confirms my thoughts. "Because there's no holding back now, and I don't know what that ultimately looks like."

I don't say anything. I kiss the back of her hand and exit the car, and then open her door. I keep her hand in mine until we get up the front steps and into the house. When we're safely inside with the front door locked, I smile at her. "It's two o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday and we have no place else to be. Want to start finding out what it looks like?"

She smiles back at me and brushes the tears from her face. She opens her mouth to speak, but no words come out. She ends up giving me a nod.

"You just tell me if you want me to stop," I say before I kiss her.

What her mind might be questioning, her heart and body have the answers for, because she molds herself into that kiss, and her lips that taste salty from her tears tell me everything I need to know, about who she is and how she feels about me - about _us_ \- deep down inside.

We dance our way upstairs in jittery stops and starts, where our hands and lips can't stop touching long enough to get the steps in at times and we settle for a pause. Then I take one step up and she follows, or she takes one step up, and I follow. I can sense when the slight shaking of her body moves from fear to desire.

By the time we make it to the bedroom, her lips are slightly swollen, her eyes are hooded with arousal, and her breathing is frantic. We strip each other of our clothing until we are naked and she pulls me back so I fall on top of her as she tumbles to the bed. I use my muscles to shift her body until her head is resting on the pillows and then I kiss her again.

I've traveled miles of Emily's body with my lips since August, but I've never gotten to take a stop at the place I most wanted to be, and that's the first destination on my mind. However, just as my mouth starts moving from her lips and down her body, my determined Emily with a mind of her own catches me off guard, flipping my body so that I'm on my back.

It's her lips that trace a path from my mouth to my neck and start making the trek lower. "Trust me," she whispers, and I nod my head automatically. It's her lips followed by her tongue that intimately make contact with me first. As her mouth engulfs me and I moan somewhere between pleasure and desperation, it's her hands that rest gently against my hips and soothe me while she finds a rhythm that slowly drives me insane. I keep my hands clenched against the covers on the bed and try to stop myself from thrusting my hips, which is nearly impossible.

This is not something that has ever been easy for me, since the first time this ever happened at the hands and mouth of Carl Buford when I was just barely thirteen years old, and I've told Emily that. I think that's why she's doing this, and with her, it _is_ easy. And I realize that's who we are for each other - she can eradicate my past and insecurities just as I can do the same for her, until there is just the two of us, completely focused on each other, with no thoughts of any sadness or our painful histories on our minds.

"Em," I moan.

Her name falling from my lips only makes her move faster and I tense my body, trying to hold back, until I can't anymore. My hands release the blankets on the bed and move to her head, threading loosely in the silkiness of her hair. "Fuck," I mutter, and I feel her pause. I glance down and find her eyes looking at my face, a small upturn of her lips around me, and then she's moving again and she releases my hips so that I can move freely.

She doesn't stop her rhythm, not when I start thrusting uncontrollably, not when my body starts shaking, not when I gently tug her hair to warn her. I've never been able to do this in my adult life, to let go like this during oral sex, but she has one familiar hand over my heart and one gently resting on my thigh and when the release comes, it's a release that's been decades in the making. I scream and moan and squeeze my eyes shut and see stars; my body feels like it's levitating and separating from me for a few seconds and then I'm slammed back down onto the bed and into reality.

With my eyes still closed and tears just barely held at bay, I feel Emily's mouth gently release me and feel her move back up my body. I feel her cheek as it rests against my chest and her smooth, warm body as it surrounds me. "I love you," she says softly as her hands skim my ribs and her breath washes over me.

I run my fingers through her hair. "I love you, too. More than you can possibly imagine."

I catch my breath for a few more seconds and am surprised when Emily chuckles lightly. "This is definitely the best way to 'work from home.'"

I laugh and gently roll her over. Her eyes are bright and shining with love, and she doesn't look scared at all anymore. Her skin is alive under my lips as I move them across her body and she moans and sighs, her hands gently running over my back and shoulders until I move lower and she can't reach anymore and they settle on my head.

The first taste of her is like a gift and absolution after months of concern and precariousness. She is gentle sighs and whimpers and legs that shift uncontrollably and breathing that hitches and speeds up. She's so stunningly gorgeous and open and even though it's only been minutes, I feel myself start to harden again because of how her body responds to me. It's not long before I feel her thighs tighten around me and I feel her start to shake and then she arches up against my mouth and gasps loudly and she's a quivering mess moaning my name and falling apart.

I kiss her thighs and her hips and raise up so I can take in her body and flushed face. She opens her eyes after a few seconds and gives me the most endearing lopsided grin I've ever seen on her face. Then she glances down at my body and raises her left eyebrow, her grin spreading on her face. All I want is to be inside her again, for the first time since the morning of August thirty-first, when she left me to go on the most dangerous undercover assignment of her life and we nearly lost each other, physically and emotionally.

I know she has an IUD, but in in the many conversations we've had about everything under the sun in the past couple of months, I know she always likes to double up when it comes to protection. So, I reach over to my nightstand and open the drawer where I stashed some condoms when I first moved in with her.

Before I can reach for the box, her hand joins mine at the drawer and she pushes it shut again. Her hands on my hips guide me down until I'm laying on top of her. We fit together nearly instantly, a slight shift of her hips and her legs rising up around my waist and minimal adjustment on my part, and I'm sliding inside her, our eyes locked on one another. I watch as a tear forms in her right eye and gathers in the corner and I kiss that tear away before kissing her lips again.

Our pace is languid and she's holding me so tightly to her that I can barely move, and it's beautiful and overwhelming and the best I've ever felt in my life. Together, we are comfort and security, and perfection in our flaws, and a paragon of unconditional love and trust.


	8. Chapter 8

_November 28, 2015_

Derek sits next to me in my car while we're parked across the street from my mother's home. It's dark outside and I can see her shadowy figure moving around through the curtains on the first floor of her house. He reaches for my hand and rubs his thumb lightly over my index finger, but he doesn't say anything; he sits back patiently and waits for me to make my move - or not.

We've only been home from Chicago for a few hours, but after we gorged ourselves on his mother's Thanksgiving leftovers, I asked him if he wanted to come with me while I went to see my mother, and he had his jacket on and was waiting at door seconds later, like he knew this was coming.

I could have told Hotch and Gideon my suspicions of what was going on with Derek back in 2006 - while they were scrambling and trying to talk to him while he was in custody, and we were at Derek's childhood home, I was the only one who entered his bedroom. Had I known him or any of the team better, I would have relayed my suspicions right away. As it was, I glanced around his bedroom and kept my mouth shut, feeling like I was invading something very private that Derek Morgan didn't want anyone to know.

The evidence was literally as plain as the pictures on the walls of his bedroom. He was a moderately talented artist from the time he was a young boy, and his walls were filled with things he'd drawn. The pictures took a turn in 1982, after his dad died - the happy family gave way to sadder images, but he was still big in those pictures; sad, but not lacking in self esteem. His drawings of himself altered in 1984 - he started getting smaller and the pictures took on a darker shadow. By the time I'd gathered the courage to at least go speak with Derek - a man I hardly knew at the time - he'd escaped police custody and Hotch and Gideon had figured things out on their own.

I understand why his mom and sisters didn't see it, because in between those pictures were trophies on shelves and scholastic awards from school. That house, for all its love, was a sad place - a shrine and memorial to a man who was killed back into 1981. Though the living room furniture has been upgraded and the walls have been repainted since I was here last, all the pictures and decorations, including those things in Derek's bedroom, were back in their place.

And Derek - he was a young boy literally torn in two, grieving the loss of his father still while another man was doing unspeakable things to him under the guise of fatherly love.

None of this has been lost on me - that what my mother accused my father of doing was exactly what was happening to Derek Morgan at around the same time, just on different continents and in different scenarios. It also hasn't escaped me how rare and beautiful what the two of us has actually is. The two of us together are an oasis of peace in a life that had its good parts, but was littered with turmoil and guilt and heartache.

If I had one wish, it wouldn't be to change my past: It would be that I could go back in time and find him when he was twelve and put a stop to what was to come.

I said as much to Derek when we arrived at his mother's home late on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. His mother excused herself to bed shortly after we arrived, and we took our things to Derek's room. With one finger on a picture where a small boy was sitting on a couch in a dark room and what looked like a phantom was looming over him - a picture that was tacked between a citizenship award from school and an honor roll ribbon - I whispered, "I wish I could go back and save you from this."

He moved behind me and I felt his forehead tip and rest against the back of my head. With one hand, he reached around me and took the picture from the wall, tearing the top as it pulled from the pushpin. He placed it face down on the small desk in the room. Then, with one arm around my chest and the other around my waist, his fingers under my sweater and brushing the skin on my stomach, he whispered in my ear, "All roads led to here."

And he was right in that sentiment, a sentiment we'd shared in one way or another with each other over the past several weeks. You make one change in our lives, one altered outcome, and maybe Derek and I would have never found each other. If my father had stayed or taken me with him, if Ian Doyle or Carl Buford had never happened, if Derek's father hadn't been murdered, if Hotch or Rossi or Reid or JJ or Penelope or Clyde Easter weren't exactly who they were, if the universe tilted just a little bit and changed our pasts, we might not ever have ended up together.

"Here's pretty perfect," I agreed in a hushed breath.

I felt his lips smile against the skin on my neck before he kissed me there. " _Here_ redefines perfection."

He was still for a few seconds, his face against my neck, inhaling my skin and holding me close to him. But then his right hand joined his left under my sweater and I smiled and tried to step away. "We're not doing this here, with your mother sleeping just down the hall."

"Of course not," he murmured against my skin, but his hands traveled up as the words left his lips, cupping my breasts over my bra, and his mouth moved up my neck to behind my ear.

The forty-eight hours before that moment had been an accumulation of about sixteen hours of work for each of us, about three hours of total travel time - from our house, to the airport, on the flight, and to his mother's - and about thirty hours of sex with very little sleep or eating or anything else mixed in.

For weeks, Derek Morgan had been the perfect gentleman, with his arms around me and his naked body pressed against mine, and seeking nothing else. Once that particular seal had been broken, though, he was insatiable. Not that I was complaining. Not that I wasn't just the same. It was me who made dinner on Tuesday night and was seated completely naked at the dining room table with two candles lighting the house, waiting for him to get home from work.

I understood it was newness and relief and that this would all eventually settle down, and I acknowledged that it felt slightly uncomfortable knowing his mom was just down the hall, even if she was fast asleep. But I looked around his childhood bedroom and thought maybe a little genuine goodness in that space would be beneficial for him.

I turned in his arms and smiled up at him. "OK. But you be quiet," I whispered.

"Me?" he laughed incredulously.

"Shut up," I laughed back.

Yes, I am, apparently a screamer; wanton and open and nothing like the woman I knew before those negative HIV tests came back. I was under no delusion that my current openness had anything much to do with me. It had to do with the man who held me to him while his skin practically burned with passion. It had to do with how he kissed me and touched me to the point that I was a quivering mess before anything really got started. It had to do with the fact that when I let loose with a scream and a cacophony of moans and whimpers, I could crack open my eyes and see Derek Morgan staring at me, a look of awe and happiness and absolute love on his face. I'd scream until the windows in our house shattered if it meant seeing that look on his face.

And it felt good. It felt good to be in a home where there was love and care, where a multitude of family members would descend the next day. It felt good to be quietly tangled around Derek's body on a double bed in a room that had history, regardless of what that history was, because I had none of that. I never had a childhood home; I never stayed longer than a few years in any one place growing up, and my adult history was not much better than that.

We were quiet, almost silent. But his sweat-slicked skin cooled against me afterwards, and his breath was heavy against my cheek, and his arms locked around me. "If I made a picture of this, it would have to be an abstract painting - bright colors and bursting light and a heart on fire and growing larger by the day in the middle."

And that made me feel good as well. It was exactly how I felt. I read once that you could dance in the middle of a hurricane, as long as you stood right in the middle. Things regarding my father were sad, and things regarding my mother were unsettled. And in the middle was me and Derek, dancing and learning to live together and dealing with our issues and not faltering in the absolutely faith we had in ourselves and in each other, that together was where we were meant to be.

I slept late the next morning, which was rare for me lately, and woke up to an empty bed. When I went downstairs, I found Derek and Fran in the kitchen; Derek had his hands full helping with the stuffing and his mom just putting a couple of pies in the oven.

"Sleep well?" Fran asked me innocently, but I saw Derek give me a lecherous grin out of the corner of my eye, and I immediately blushed. Derek started laughing quietly and I shot him a look, which did nothing to shut him up.

"Yes, thank you," I said to Fran with a straight face.

She nodded and turned her back and I lightly punched Derek in the arm. I didn't know who I was then, but I felt far removed from the serious, professional forty-five year old woman I should be. Or maybe I didn't want to be that woman anymore, at least not all the time, because when Fran left the room for a minute I looked at Derek, prepared to deliver a death stare, and ended up laughing at the guilty look on his face.

"What can I do to help?" I asked after kissing his cheek and letting the matter drop.

"We need to peel enough potatoes to feed an army," he said. "The guest list has grown and there will be nineteen here for dinner. I've never actually brought anyone home like this before, for the holidays or for several days at a time, and the family is crawling out of the woodworks."

I raised my eyebrows, thinking of Savannah. "You haven't?"

He shook his head. "Nope. My mother would have poked holes in every relationship I've ever had, noticing every nuance that wasn't good for me and every bit of me that was faking something or trying too hard for the wrong reasons. She met Savannah. We flew out here for a weekend and we stayed at a hotel. We visited with my mother in short increments."

I went to the sink and started rinsing off and peeling the vat of potatoes there. "Oh," I finally responded, suddenly feeling nervous.

I heard him laugh lightly again and turned to look at him. His eyes were staring at me intently. "You think you have anything to worry about? My mom's playing it cool, but if a seventy-year-old woman could do cartwheels without hurting herself, my mother would be using that as her mode of transportation through the house right now."

I smiled at him as Fran returned to the kitchen.

I more than just made it through Thanksgiving - a Thanksgiving unlike anything I'd ever experienced before, where jokes were delivered and smiles were plentiful and gentle ribbing was soothed with hugs.

This family had had more than its fair share of trauma, but they were all still hanging in there, present and able to enjoy life. It was refreshing. There were adults and babies and children - nieces and cousins and second cousins.

When one of Derek's cousins turned to me on the couch after dinner and put her infant son in my arms with a, "Do you mind? I need to use the restroom," I didn't quite know what to do. The last baby I'd held in my arms was Henry, and that was years ago. But I held on and smiled at the infant in my arms, who eyed me curiously. Derek was in the middle of a raucous video game with his two teenage cousins, but turned to glance at me at that moment. I imagined I looked a little scared and a little loving and a lot sad. He didn't make a huge deal about it, but when he walked past me to get a glass of water, he trailed his fingers through my hair and squeezed my shoulder.

It wasn't until Saturday morning, when Derek was outside working on his mother's car, that Fran had the opportunity to get me totally alone.

She slid a fresh mug of coffee towards me and smiled at me. Then she launched right in. "Derek told me a bit about your mother and father, not because he wanted to betray your confidence, but because he didn't want me to put my foot in my mouth, asking about them when it might have been difficult for you."

I looked at her and nodded, not knowing quite what to say.

She patted my hand. "I figure one secret deserves another. Derek told me about your parents, and I'm going to tell you something that I've never told him. Not that I expect you to keep secrets from him. You can tell him, or maybe I should."

I raised my eyebrows and waited.

"After my husband was murdered, I made it through the days, for my children, but I barely made it through. I woke up every morning angry or sad and had to force myself to get lunches packed and breakfast and dinner on the table. Derek's sisters were older, and they helped out quite a bit, but I missed a lot, for about seven years. I only recently learned how much had passed me by, how much I didn't see that I needed to see because I was so angry."

Her voice cracked at that last sentence and I reached out to squeeze her hand.

"Are you angry, Emily?" she asked.

I tilted my head and considered that. "It's easy with Derek to forget that I'm angry, but I am a little. Sometimes it rises up inside me when I'm not expecting it. I'm angry with my mother," I said quietly. It was odd and natural, that I was talking to Fran Morgan like that at all.

Fran nodded and let the tears in her eyes fall. "When Derek was seventeen and got his acceptance letter for college, I remember looking at him and thinking I'd missed my baby growing up because of my anger. I decided I didn't want to miss anymore, even though I knew he'd be leaving for college. So I did the one thing I thought could help me release some of my anger: I went to Tamm's Correctional Facility and visited with the man who murdered my husband. Our minister, my church friends, my family - all of them for years had told me that my salvation would come in forgiveness. I didn't believe them then, and I don't believe them now. Forgiveness is truly a fool's dream, under certain circumstances. I didn't walk into that jail to forgive; I walked in to let go. I heard the man out. I learned that he was trying to steal money to feed his family, but I also learned that had become a way of life for him at that point, despite the alternatives and opportunities he'd had as a younger man. I didn't feel sorry for him, and I never forgave him, but the morning after I talked with him, I woke up and didn't feel angry for the first time in eight years. I learned to let go and start living life in a positive direction again."

I kept my hand in hers and looked at her face. I smiled understandingly and boldly reached out with my free hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks. I swallowed past the lump in my own throat and nodded, so that she knew I understood what she was saying. "That was very brave of you," I said.

"It was. And it was also necessary, and I wish I'd done it years before, because if I had I would have had the common sense to see that things were not right with Derek. It was me holding onto anger and bitterness that made me miss the misery my own child was experiencing. And that's why I'm telling you this. You may not feel angry all the time now, but that might happen for you. If it does, you need to find a way to let go, even if you can't forgive. And you have the opportunity to do that before the anger takes root inside you."

I stood from the kitchen table and stepped towards her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and leaning down. "Thank you," I whispered.

Her arms wrapped around, one hand on my back and the other on my head. I felt her lips kiss my cheek and melted into the hug of a motherly figure for the first time in my life. I wept and held on for several minutes.

When I'd calmed down, I released her and sat back down. I stared at her face and then stared around the kitchen and the living room, where framed pictures from the eighties still hung on the walls.

"Derek told me he's offered several times to help you move someplace else," I said delicately.

"He has. It's difficult for me to think about leaving this place. This is where I was happily married and had three beautiful children. I know there are safer neighborhoods. I know I could stay in Chicago or come to DC, and I know he'd willingly provide for me whatever I needed. But it's hard to walk away from my memories."

"I can understand that. But you can take these things with you. Sarah and Desiree have moved farther away from the city, and I know you don't see them as often anymore. You could move closer to them or you could move near us. Memories aren't just pictures on the wall; they're the stories in your heads. You could be closer to someone who can share those memories with you more regularly."

She studied my face and then smiled. Wiping her eyes, she stood from the table and leaned over to place a kiss on my forehead. "I'll make you a deal. You consider what I said, and I'll consider what you just said."

Smiling slightly and feeling almost as content and comfortable with Fran Morgan as I did with her son, I nodded. "Deal."

I shared that conversation with Derek last night in hushed whispers, in his small bed in his childhood bedroom, but I didn't talk about it after that. I hugged Fran extra long before we got in a taxi for the airport, and I was quiet on the flight home and relatively quiet while we ate dinner.

And then I proposed going to see my mother, and now we sit here in front of her house.

I contemplate whether or not I'm ready for this, but the reality is that one thing that Fran said to me keeps sticking in my and mind and tripping me up - that if I don't deal with this, I might get lost in anger. I'm worried what I would look like if that happened; I'm worried about what Derek and I would look like if that happened.

"It's okay if you're not ready for this yet," he says. "Or if you never are. There are many ways to let go, and it doesn't have to be a direct path. I know who you are and I won't let you get lost."

I turn to stare at his stunningly kind and loving face. Clyde Easter had said nearly that same sentence to me a little over three months ago. Derek and I are both carrying each other through the burdens of our pasts, and we are doing well, but I don't want it to be like that forever. I imagine a time when there are few burdens and just happiness. The thought is scary and thrilling and comforting and I want that with him more than I've ever wanted anything in my life.

Taking a deep breath, I squeeze Derek's hand then release it and step out of my vehicle. I don't get more than halfway across the street before he's beside me, his fingers linked with mine and the feel of his lips on my cheek. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to. We no longer have each other's backs with guns and careful assessment of cases; we have them with loving touches and words conveyed with affection and warmth.

I ring the doorbell, and my mother answers within a few seconds, her eyes shocked to see me on her front porch, and then they immediately fill with tears. I've never really seen my mother cry, but her tears don't penetrate my heart in any significant way.

She takes in my silence and wipes her eyes, opening the door and ushering us in. We sit in her living room that's back to being tidy and perfect after the mess I left there just a month before. Derek and I sit on the couch, his hand still held firmly in mine, while she faces us in a chair.

"Why?" I ask. It's a cross between pleading and anger.

She looks down. She offers up one of the scenarios Derek and I already contemplated. "I didn't understand how you and your father could be so close. I spent my whole life seeking my father's approval, and your relationship with your father came so easy to both of you. You started growing up, and you only grew closer to him and I couldn't understand it. It was the only thing I could think of, that your relationship with him wasn't as innocent as you both portrayed it, because I had no context for it. When he started talking about leaving and taking you with him, I reacted horribly. I threw out accusations, and I kept doing it, until he was second-guessing himself. Back then I let myself believe that I was on the right track. I couldn't let you go, Emily. You were nearly fifteen years old at the time, and I feel like I barely knew you and I wanted to. When he left, I saw how sad you were. And then you closed yourself off, and I realized what a horrible thing it was that I'd done, but I didn't know how to find your dad then."

Her tears cascade down her face, and she punctuates her initial statement with details and elaboration that I'm not really interested in. And realize this _is_ a part of letting go, that I needed to see her and talk to her so that I wasn't worried about running into her on the streets of DC. That I needed to know her story so I wouldn't waste any more of my energy guessing.

She doesn't reach for me, and I don't reach for her. I let her say everything that's on her mind and wait until she's finished and has calmed herself for a bit before speaking. I don't ask her why she didn't tell me when I was older, or why she lied to me on the several occasions I asked her if she knew where my father was. It's pointless - there are no answers that are going to satisfy me.

"I want you to transfer whatever is left of my father's money to me. I'll take care of him from now on," I say calmly.

"You've seen him?" she asks.

I nod my head and she raises her eyebrows, but I give her nothing else. She doesn't need to know the state he's in. She's had the ability to drive and see for herself for nearly two decades, and she hasn't done it and I'm not going to give her that information. "There are boxes here," I continue. "Some of his things, and some of mine. They're in the basement. I want to take them tonight."

She nods. "Of course," she says quietly.

Derek and I stand and I walk towards the door in the kitchen that leads to the basement. We're methodical and quiet about collecting the boxes and putting them in the back seat of my car. We make two trips and my mother stays in the chair in the living room the whole time, her eyes following me when I pass her.

I know she's waiting for something from me, but it's something I'm not capable of giving. "I'll contact you tomorrow about transferring the money."

I intend for that to be one of the last sentences I ever speak to my mother.

Derek and I drive home in silence and we bring the boxes up from the car and into the living room. I dive right into them. I found the beginnings of letting go with my mother, but it wasn't the only thing I was after.

Derek sits next to me on the floor while I tear into one box that's labeled "Chris" and find what I really need - a tangible history of my father, and myself and better times. I take out his college diploma and put it aside, digging further into the box. I find pictures and letters he wrote my mother during their first two summers at college, when they were separated.

I open the other two boxes of my childhood things. There are music boxes carefully stored in bubble wrap, but beneath them are school papers and drawings I made. There are report cards and a few books. There are notes from friends and scholastic awards. I lay these treasures out around me.

Derek has a bedroom in Chicago with his whole childhood laid out on shelves and on the walls, he has a quilt from his grandmother upstairs in our bedroom, he has books and pictures and an old, worn leather chair. I've only ever had newness, filling any place I lived with artwork and furniture and decorations to detract from the fact that I had little else with me except a few pictures tucked away in a photo album that were too painful to look at.

I pick up a report card from fifth grade, when we were living in Paris. I open it and see the message from my teacher. _Je ne suis pas sûr si Emily est destiné à une salle d'audience ou d'une vie comme un romancier de fiction. Je ne sais que je ne veux pas être contre elle sur une équipe de débat. Je sais que je perdrais._ _Je ne suis pas sûr si Emily est destiné à une salle d'audience ou d'une vie comme un romancier de fiction. Je ne sais que je ne veux pas être contre elle sur une équipe de débat. Je sais que je perdrais._

I laugh and point to it, leaning my head against Derek's shoulder. "What does it mean?" he asks.

"She says I'm smart and a friend to everyone. She doesn't know if I'm destined for a courtroom or a life as a fiction novelist, but she knows she wouldn't want to be up against me on a debate team. She knows she'd lose."

I feel the rush of breath on my hair from Derek's quiet laugh. He squeezes his arm around me, hugging me to his body. He reaches out and touches a picture of me at about the age of six receiving an award at school, a smile on my face and my father standing next to me, an identical smile on his face.

"You had a beautiful childhood," he says.

I did, and I need to remember that. It wasn't beautiful because of my mother or my grandfather, but because of a man who is currently in a boat somewhere, not able to face himself. But I can face myself. I can let go of what I need to and hold onto what's important - the pieces of my past that made me who I am now, and the man currently wrapping me in his arms reminding me that my present is just as beautiful.


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N - Sorry I didn't get this up last night. My oldest started high school on Monday, and my twins started middle school on Wednesday, and in between there I had two online classes I've developed go live. It's been a crazy week! Hoping to get the next chapter up tomorrow. :)_

* * *

 _December 23, 2015_

When December rolled around, three thoughts invaded my mind significantly. One: Emily had invited my mother for the holidays, it was time to make one of the empty bedrooms in the rowhouse into a guest room for her, and it was stupid to buy new things when I a perfectly nice assortment of furniture in my house that would furnish a comfortable guest room. Two: It was probably time to deal with that house, where I was stopping by to collect mail and pay the bills on a place I was no longer living and had no intention of living in again. Three: I had absolutely no fucking idea what to get Emily for Christmas.

The first one was dealt with pretty swiftly the weekend after Thanksgiving. Emily and I rented a moving truck, the team pitched in, with the help of Will and Henry; JJ stayed home with her new, one-week old son, Zachary, who came into this world just a few hours after Emily and I had sat on the living room floor looking through boxes of her father's and her childhood belongings.

We made one trip to the Salvation Army to donate the things I no longer wanted or needed, including the bed I shared with Savannah. We moved the rest to Georgetown, using one empty space for a guest room and another empty space for an exercise room. I could now lift weights and run on a treadmill overlooking the Potomac rather than staring at the dank walls of a basement.

The weather cooled significantly and our early-morning runs turned into exercising together in that room, taking turns with the treadmill and the weights, and usually culminating in a shared shower that included a little more exercise of the more intimate variety.

Something shifted the week after Thanksgiving, for both Emily and I; something critical, but difficult to explain, not that I'd attempt to try and explain it to anyone. In our bed, or the shower or the living room or even on the mats in the exercise room, the intimacy I shared with Emily was different than anything I'd ever experienced before - all peace and no tension and mind-blowing sex every, single time.

I've had sex before - plenty of sex - and as far as I know no one ever left the bed unsatisfied, aside from the sloppy, nervous first few tries for me when I was in college. But sex for me was always about measured control and staying focused - _Pay attention, Derek - Stay alert, Derek - Don't freak out if she touches you like that Derek, deflect and divert her attention - Don't get complacent, and never let yourself feel vulnerable._ Those were the mantras I chanted in my head throughout over two decades of intimacy with women. I'd never totally given myself over to sex because I'd never been the arms of a woman who I trusted so completely, where I could close my eyes and just enjoy sensations without the nagging feeling of potential vulnerability, or a flashback to my childhood.

I was called away on a case the Tuesday after we returned from Chicago, and I returned late on Thursday evening. That night, after Emily and I enjoyed a late dinner and I was at the sink doing the dishes, she came up behind me. One thing lead to another and her body and hands and lips were everywhere while I laid on my back on the kitchen floor, neither of us able to make it any farther than that. Before I knew it, words fell from my lips that I'd never said before - I begged her to take me in her mouth. I'd been relatively passive through that particularly activity the week before, stunned that I was able to orgasm at all, and immediately focused on her body afterwards.

That time was different though, there on the hardwood floor of the kitchen with my hands still damp from doing the dishes. It was a rush of emotions, sensations and visions - her mouth quirked up in a small smile before she moved herself lower down my body, and I encouraged her with words and my body. Something rose up inside me; an emotion so deep I didn't even know what it was at first. And then I realized it was the sensation of healing something deep inside me I worked so hard to deny was broken. I'd spent my entire adulthood covering up the part of me that made me feel weak and damaged, avoiding those activities that reminded me.

With her mouth on me and me being an active participant, without mantras chanted in my head to stay focused and avoiding vulnerability, I gave myself over to her - to this woman who loved me so completely and whom I trusted with with every fiber of my being. I felt her tilt her head and a rush of breath from her nose washed over my groin, and then the sensation of slipping down her throat. I came nearly instantly, with a strangled cry, and the tears rushed up from out of nowhere. And even that didn't embarrass me, because her body was over mine seconds later, blanketing me in the safety of her softness, kissing my face and whispering, "I love you. It's okay."

I held onto to her and when I regained my ability to speak, I whispered back, "I know it's okay. We're okay."

I'm not sure what I was trying to say, but she rounded out my thoughts for me. "I don't just think we can make it, Derek. I _know_ it."

It was a similar sentence that I'd whispered to her with hope that was quickly dashed, in her bed after JJ's wedding over three years ago. My tears turned to joyous laughter right after she said it and I hugged her impossibly more tightly. I realized then that something had changed for her, too, that she was healing just as much as I was, because of my love and her absolute trust in me.

And it was in that moment that I completely stopped worrying about her potentially leaving if things got to be too much. She truly wasn't going anywhere.

The pressure mounted inside me to try and find her the perfect Christmas gift, and I tossed ideas around in my mind. A ring, as much as I'd like to put one on her finger, seemed almost trite given everything, too soon and not soon enough and almost unnecessary. Other jewelry felt perfunctory. I pondered trips and outings and in the middle of that, I decided to put my house on the market.

It was the second Tuesday in December when I opened up the fire safe that had been moved from my house and now sat in the closet in the den. While searching for my mortgage documentation, I came across a folder of Savannah's things - a copy of her birth certificate, the title to her car, her passport.

I could have plopped those things in the mail, but I'd studiously avoided any contact with her since I'd been home from London, and it felt like maybe I wasn't entirely doing my part to put my past behind me and move into the future. For the same reason Emily felt compelled to see her mother - so she wouldn't run into her unexpectedly on the street - I called Savannah and showed up at her hospital with the folder and two coffees on Wednesday morning.

"Hey," she greeted me uncertainly when I arrived at her office.

"Hi," I said just as softly. I handed her the folder and her coffee and sat in the chair opposite her desk. "How are things going?"

She shrugged, blinking frantically. "OK. How are you?"

 _Ecstatic. Euphoric. In love. Happier than I've ever been._ "I'm doing well," I settled on.

The silence stretched from acceptable to uncomfortable and I was about ready to leave when Savannah said, "I'm sorry I left like I did."

I nodded. "That was difficult for me, but I can understand why that felt like the best option for you. Our end was inevitable, I think." I didn't tack on the fact that if she hadn't left, I believe everything would have still gone down like it did for me - I would have been kidnapped, Emily would have gotten me back, and I would have fallen impossibly in love with her all over again - and then I would have had to come home and explain all of that to Savannah. Her leaving like she did spared me having to share all of that, and I'm actually thankful for it now.

"You do?" Savannah asked.

I raised my eyebrows. Surely she knew this; she was the one who left. "Savannah, we were a disaster, finding extraneous bandaids to things that we couldn't fix. That doesn't mean I didn't love you or that I don't care about you and want you to be happy now. We were never going to find that middle ground, though, between our jobs and our relationship. And, if I'm completely honest, I think I relished the demands of my job because it kept you from getting too close to me. That has nothing to do with you; it has to do with me and issues I've never dealt with."

 _Which is why, I think, my job is less appealing to me now than it was before, at least in part. Because I am dealing with my issues and every night I'm away from home is a night spent aching for Emily to be sleeping next to me in bed, instead of an emotional break that I felt I needed when I was with you._ I didn't say that, but I thought it.

Savannah eyed me. "You're putting the house on the market?"

I nodded. I'd told her that on the phone. "Yes. I'm living in Georgetown."

At that point I stood up to leave because I didn't want to get into the details of my life now, not because I didn't want to shout my happiness out for the world to hear, but because I truly didn't want to hurt her feelings at how quickly I'd moved on, or have to try and explain the details of why that was able to happen.

She stood as well and I walked around her desk and gave her a hug. "I hope you have a wonderful life," I whispered in her ear. "You deserve it."

I didn't wait for her response. I gave her a quick squeeze and released her and turned towards the door.

"Thank you," she called out. "You're a good guy, Derek. I don't want you to ever think that my leaving had anything to do with who I think you are as a human being. You're kind and perceptive and we just didn't work out together. You're right. So, thank you. And thank you for bringing me my things."

I nodded and kept walking, and I was struck with an epiphany, a memory of a time when I was only just starting to get to know Emily and she'd told me I was a good guy, and that I made the people around me feel good. That conversation had continued in the Bureau vehicle while we drove around and surveilled the neighborhood. "It's like you know what people want to hear or what they need, even people who are too afraid to ask," she'd said to me.

And suddenly, I knew what I needed to do, and exactly what to get Emily for Christmas. It was going to take a lot of kind words and compelling argument. It was going to require me to bust down defenses and get inside the mind of a man whose mind was all but completely blotted out by alcohol. But I'd done it before - I'd done it with unsubs and victims and suspects, and if anyone had a shot at doing it with Emily's father, it was me. Or me and the help of friends who are like family to me and Emily.

Which was how, on the second Friday in December, I found myself sitting on a dock next to a boat with Aaron Hotchner. Garcia had tracked Chris's boat to a slip in Virginia Beach, and Hotch and I waited patiently until the man emerged at around eleven in the morning.

If Emily had one wish, it would be a relationship with her father. In the absence of that, I believe what she needed was one good day, and a truthful goodbye if that's all her father could offer. I wasn't there to ask him to get sober for the rest of his life, for however long that was. I was there to ask him to go into treatment and just get sober enough for one day, if that's all he could offer.

I brought with me his diploma and pictures of him and Emily from when Emily was a young girl. I brought with me the names of two treatment facilities who were willing to take him that day, if he'd just come with us. I brought with me hope and all the love in my heart, for the woman who thought I was currently at work, and the love I felt for a man who might have been a mess, but made Emily who she was, who chiseled out the softer parts of her and whose softer parts were now mine to have and to hold.

And it worked, Miraculously, it worked.

Which is why now, at four o'clock in the morning two days before Christmas, while my mother sleeps in our guest room room one floor above us, I'm wide awake, laying on my side, and watching Emily's peacefully sleeping form in bed next to me. It's supposed to be a clear, bright day, even though it's going to be cold and the wind will be biting.

I run my fingers over her hip and watch as her lip gives a slight upturn in her sleep. "Em," I whisper.

Her eyes lazily open. "Is it a case?" she asks.

"No." Hotch is very well aware of the fact that if he called me away on a case right now, I'd probably tell the FBI to fuck it forever more. Emily's officially working from home until after the New Year, unless there's an emergency. And I'm in a similar boat, on call, but not today. "It's your Christmas present," I whisper to her.

Her eyes become a little more alert. "What do you mean?"

"Get up. Get dressed. Come on," I say with a smile.

"What are you doing?" she asked confusedly while sitting up in bed.

"I'm a nice guy who knows how to give you what you need, even if you're not able to voice it," I say.

She smiles slightly at that and gets out of bed. I've already laid some warm clothes out for her and I hand them to her, one article at a time, while she dresses. "But where are we going?" she asks.

"You'll see," is all I say. I'm not even nervous. This is absolutely right. It might be overwhelming for her at first, but it's right and necessary.

She finishes dressing and pulls on shoes and we head out the front door and towards my car. "Your mom," she says.

"She's got wrapping to do and wants to bake pies today. She'll be fine," I say.

We get in my car, and there are very few other cars on the freeway, making the drive to Annapolis short. Emily catches wind of where we're going about halfway through the 45-minute drive.

"The boat?" she asks.

I nod and squeeze her hand, and I say nothing else. I reach into the backseat and pull out the thermos of coffee I'd put back there before I woke her up, handing it to her.

When we arrive at the marina, I park the car and exit the vehicle, quickly coming around and opening her door. I guide her out and to my trunk. I pull out gloves and hand them to her. And then I pull out Clyde Easter's hand-made tactical jacket that he left her when he died. She raises her eyebrows and lets me slip it on and up her arms.

I take a cooler and put in on the ground, then grab a case from the trunk. I close the lid and set the case on the car, opening it to reveal a new fishing pole. "I hear the bass and white flounder are great in the winter on the Chesapeake Bay," I say with a smile. I reach into one of the pockets on the chest of the jacket she's wearing and pull out some new lures. Another pocket reveals bait.

"You're coming out sailing with me and we're going fishing for Christmas?" she asks, a smile lighting her face.

I shake my head and grin back, noticing the figure behind her, standing at the edge of the dock leading to her boat. "Not quite. Yes, I'm coming with you, but it's more to be an observer and support if you need it."

I place my hands on her shoulders and turn her body around. It takes her a second to recognize him, now that his thin, gray hair has been been cut short and much of the yellow has disappeared from the skin of his face. He's dressed in clean, new clothes - a warm sweater and a big jacket. And he's smiling at Emily.

I feel her shoulders tense under mine. "What did you do?" she asks in wonder.

"What I needed to do because I love you and know you," I respond.

She gives a light laugh at that, turns to kiss me quickly and touch my cheek, her eyes awash with love and disbelief. And then she's running towards her father. She stops short of him and I can see him staring at her.

He steps towards her and wraps her in his arms, and I can hear it from here - a sound that is half laugh and half cry and perfection and joy and everything the holidays and life are meant to be for the people I love, but especially Emily.


	10. Chapter 10

_January 1, 2016_

If I had known back when I was thirteen that when my father and I docked his boat at the marina outside of Rome it would be the last time I'd sail with him, I would have paid better attention. I would have memorized the way he looked when he hoisted the sails and the boat picked up speed. I would have stared at his face and recorded every laugh line in my mind. I would have taken a mental picture of how his hand looked on the tiller and learned his laugh by heart so that I could recall those things any time.

A few years after that fateful day when my mother put her foot down and said no more sailing, and then my father left just a little over a year after that, I could barely recall those details about him, no matter how much I tried. I think, though, that was the beginning of how I learned to profile people - never wanting to miss anything again because I assumed there would be more opportunities, I started watching mannerisms and facial expressions of people - friends and acquaintances. I started noticing subtleties and committing people to memory.

By the time I was nineteen, long before thoughts of the FBI and Interpol even entered my mind, I could tell a lot about a person - even strangers - just by watching their behavior. By the time I was twenty-one, it became a bar game with my college friends.

" _He's married. His eyes are roving around and he's nervous someone he knows might see him here. Plus he's keeping his left hand in his lap. His ring is off, but he probably has a faint tan line there."_

" _I don't know what she's telling that guy, but she's lying. You can tell by the way she's holding her shoulders and the way her eyes keep shifting to the left, seeking creativity for her story from that side of her brain."_

My friends thought it was great fun, and they loved that nearly all of the time I was right. I never told them that my parlor trick was a well-honed skill that came from the most devastating moment of my life - that when it counted, I wasn't paying enough attention and I was going to make sure I never missed or forgot anything about a person I cared about again.

When I was on that sailboat with my father again, just a little over a week ago, two days before Christmas - over thirty-one years since the last time we were on the water together - I realized that what I could not call up in memory rushed at me like de ja vu once my father helped me hoist the sails on my boat.

 _Duex Lunes._ But there were three of us on the boat that day; three people who had the ability to clear the clouds from the sky just by existing and going through the cycle of life as best they could. Because we were not unloving or deceitful people. We were damaged in some ways, and we dealt with those things in ways that were not always healthy, but at the core of us we were all good and kind and honest.

Even my father, whose smile was almost like I remembered it even if his teeth weren't the sparkling white they used to be; whose hands still shook slightly, but he was sober and he held the tiller in the relaxed way I remembered once I saw it again; whose wrinkles were plentiful and hair was grey, but the slope of his shoulders and the way he looked at me reminded me of the relaxed, loving man I once knew.

We didn't talk much when we first set out; I wasn't sure how to get a conversation started, and I wasn't even sure if I needed words from him. At first, his presence was enough. But when I cast my fishing rod over the side of the boat and got a bite just minutes later, my father laughed. "Do you remember when you were five and we were fishing on Lake Nasser in Egypt? I was busy with the boat and you caught a bite and tried to reel in a fish much too large for you on your own. You went right over the side, Lune. But the best part was when you popped your head up in the water and laughed. We lost a good fishing rod that day, but I didn't care. I remember thinking that you would never be the type to scare easily."

The tears welled in my eyes and I nodded at him, "I remember."

He smiled at me and touched my cheek. "Alcohol has taken a lot from my mind and my body, but it's taken none of my memories of you."

That was the way our time on the boat went for the first couple of hours on that cold and clear December morning. We'd lapse into silence, and then my father would bring up a memory. And I'd laugh or cry. Derek was a quiet bystander for the most part, but I was acutely aware of him when his hand would touch my my back or my hand at just the right moment; when I needed him to. He smiled frequently at my father when he made me laugh from a funny memory, and clamped his warm, gentle hand on my father's shoulder often throughout that morning.

Derek, who knew what I needed when I was too scared to put it into words because I didn't want to be disappointed. Derek, who I knew instinctively had gotten my father sober and here not by asking for forever, but probably by asking for just this - just one sober day on a boat with me.

What shocked me into complete disbelief was that after we'd caught several bass and eaten the brunch Derek had packed, when it was just after noon and we'd been out on the boat for a little over six hours, was when my father nodded at Derek and me and said, "It would be a shame not to be able to enjoy today's catch with you."

And beneath those words, a truth I picked up on right away, " _I can handle this for a little longer, being sober and being with my daughter. I'm not ready to let go yet._ "

My father, who I learned was dropped off at the marina by Andrew Farley, came home with us. He insisted on curling his long legs into the backseat of Derek's car so I could take the passenger seat, and he was so quiet on the drive back to the rowhouse, that I frequently looked over my shoulder to make sure he was real and still there. I kept one hand in Derek's and one clutched against my leg, butterflies hammering around inside my stomach, and my heart beating so fast that I could hear it in my ears.

What I never fully considered was the power of Fran Morgan and how that woman could put even a stranger who had spent the majority of thirty years in near solitude at complete ease. She was a buffer unlike anything I'd ever seen before, perhaps purposely making mistakes at cleaning the fish so that my father could correct her and she could get him laughing. Who turned the tables when she tried to teach my father to bake bread and playfully chastised him for not kneading the dough the right way.

I sat at the table in the kitchen, Derek next to me and his hand on my thigh, feeling like I was somewhere else, in a theater somewhere watching my father on a screen, watching him come back to life right before my eyes.

We shared an enjoyable dinner of tea, fish, fresh bread and salad, followed by one of Fran's pies for dessert. I stayed away from questions I had that might be painful for him - how he'd fallen in love with my mother in the first place, how he'd convinced her to have a baby at all, how he'd gotten from Italy and back to the US, because I knew it hadn't been on his small sailboat.

"Do you want to stay tonight?" I asked him softly, hopefully, as it got later. "Fran's in the guest room, but there's a couch up in the den that folds out."

He was standing by the mantle in the living room at the time, Derek and his mom in the kitchen cleaning up, and he was staring intently at the small boat in the bottle that he'd left me. His eyes flitted between that and the framed picture of the two of us that Derek had set next to the bottle. He glanced at the stairs and then glanced at the worn leather chair, the large Christmas tree, and the warmth of a room with built-in bookcases and comfortable furniture.

His eyes were watery when they finally turned to me. "This couch will do," he said, and I let out a quiet breath I wasn't even aware I was holding.

I smiled at him and nodded. I went upstairs and returned quickly with sheets and blankets and a pillow, almost afraid he'd be gone before I got back downstairs. But he was there, waiting for me.

Derek appeared as I was making up the couch. "Let me get you something more comfortable to sleep in," he said quietly. And my father followed him upstairs, returning minutes later in a pair of Derek's sweats and a t-shirt.

We all retired to bed shortly after that since our morning had started so early. But later, around midnight, I woke up and crept downstairs. I settled into Derek's chair and quietly watched my father sleep. Not surprisingly, Derek came downstairs minutes later. He maneuvered my body so we both fit in the wide chair. "He's cute when he's sleeping," he said quietly in my ear.

And I smiled and then I quietly cried. "Thank you," I whispered to him once I'd calmed down. "There are no words for the love I feel for you."

He kissed my cheek and wrapped his arms around me, and I glanced at the Christmas tree in the room. There were a few gifts for Derek Morgan, wrapped up in bright paper and neat bows, under our tree, and they paled in comparison to what he'd given me. Suddenly the new football jersey and tickets to the Bears game on January 3rd, when they were playing in Baltimore, seemed so trivial and, quite frankly, lame.

I knew what Derek Morgan wanted most in the world even though he never voiced it, because like the skills I had honed after my father left me, I'd been watching him and taking notice. I wasn't sure I could give it to him, not in the traditional way. But in that moment I wanted to explore the possibility. _Maybe that's what true love is,_ I thought as I sat in his arms and watched my father sleep. _Maybe it's not just wanting to give people what they need or want; maybe it's loving them so completely that their needs and wants become your own - a shared goal, a shared path, even if it's a path you never thought you'd take._

We eventually made it back up to our bed that night, and on Christmas Eve morning, we came downstairs to find my father dressed, the blankets and sheets folded on the couch and him sitting comfortably, reading a book.

"I need to get back to Andrew. He'll be all alone at Christmas otherwise," my father said when he saw me.

Translation told by the look in his eyes and the way his hands gripped his thighs: _I've reached the end of what I can handle. For the moment. Please don't take it personally.  
_

I nodded and told him I'd drive him back to Delaware. He held my hand while I drove and I sensed he needed quiet, so I silently navigated the car, even keeping my breathing soft, and let the warmth of his hand permeate to my soul.

When we arrived in Delaware, I got something more than I would have dared hope for. "The family that owns this place won't be back until spring. So you'll know where to find me. If I feel like I need to get away, I'll make sure Andrew knows where I am so you can locate me. I love you. You are remarkable and I can't believe you're mine. I'll try, Lune. I'll try to not start drinking again, but I promise I won't totally disappear on you again."

With a kiss to my forehead and each cheek, he was out of the car and gone. I didn't follow him, even though I wanted to, just to wrap him in my arms and hang on. Instead, I made the drive back home with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face.

Christmas was secondary to what ultimately settled into the forefront of my mind, though pleasant in itself. The quiet dinner with Fran on Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner at Rossi's the next day. Derek holding JJ and Will's new baby boy and the look in his eyes he tried to hide only bolstered what I was waiting for.

It was on December twenty-sixth when I quietly crept into the den after Derek was asleep, did the research I needed to, and sent an email to my doctor. It was December twenty-seventh, when Derek was driving his mom to the airport and intending to stay there with her until she boarded her flight, that I drove to Dr. Craig's office.

I didn't want to set us up for grueling infertility treatments; I wanted to set us up for a potential improbability and move on to other options quickly if that didn't work, knowing neither of us could handle the ups and downs and disappointment for too long when there were other viable options out there.

I wanted to be told my uterus and Fallopian tubes and all my inner workings wouldn't be prohibitive to this on the one percent chance that at the age of forty-five, I still had any eggs in there that wanted to come out and play. Like Derek knew that just one good day with my father would be enough even if I got nothing else, I wanted to give him one sliver of chance.

The chance of something I knew he wanted and saw in his eyes when we saw kids playing at the green space across the street from the rowhouse; the longing that was plain on his face when he saw me holding his infant second-cousin; that quiet desire that seeped from his pores and into the space of a room when he was holding JJ's baby.

I got what I needed - the first part of the necessary ingredient - my uterus looked good. _Exceptionally_ good for someone my age.

When I was fifteen, after my abortion, I swore off boys for awhile, and then - when I let them back in - I swore of intercourse. I became a master at blow jobs, a skill I am in no way sorry I'd honed in the past month. When I was eighteen and at college, away from the watchful eyes of my mother, I went on the pill. I never told anyone I dated though, and it was always condoms, too. Double protection, the fear of an unexpected pregnancy all but blown out of possibility. Over eleven years ago, right before I went in with Doyle, I switched from the pill to an IUD.

When Dr. Craig pulled out the second IUD I'd had inserted in me since 2004, with a sharp twinge and a mild cramp, I felt no fear. Tears dripped down my face while my feet were up in those stirrups, and they were tears of hope. I knew Derek and I could love an adopted baby with wild abandon, but what I dreamed in that moment was of a delivery room, of him holding my hand, of sweat-slicked hair and excruciating pain that felt like a blessing, and of him holding a baby in his arms that was part him and part me.

Like the last letter my father wrote to Andrew, I envisioned Derek with our baby in his arms in the delivery room, and of him looking down at the face of that baby boy or girl and knowing that his life had changed forever. I dreamed of watching that instant connection and feeling nothing but tranquility and love, because I wasn't like my mother. Not at all. The love I felt for Derek Morgan would only grow and expand when I watched him love our child - biological or adopted.

I held out for three more days. I fell into an exhausted sleep every night, so emotionally wound up during the day and still reveling in the time I had with my father, that Derek never questioned my early bedtimes.

But on New Year's Eve, I knew it was time to give him a belated Christmas present, one that came from deep within my heart, much like he'd given me.

We sit together in his leather chair, after deciding to spend the start of the new year quietly at home together. When the ball drops in New York and we watch in fifty-inch technicolor on the TV in our living room, after he kisses me soundly, I reach into the cushions of the chair.

I hold out to him a small wrapped box.

"What's this?" he asks curiously.

The crowds are cheering in Time's Square from the TV and there is confetti flying in the air there, and there is confetti flying in my heart. "Open it," I whisper.

He moves his arms away from my body and rips into the wrapping paper, opening the lid and revealing nothing but an empty box.

His left eyebrow raises curiously at me. And I smile. "I could have taken my old IUD with me and put it in there, but that would have been kind of gross."

He stares at me and then into the box again. "What?" he whispers.

I touch the lines that have appeared on his forehead, smoothing them and then run my fingers down his face. I kiss his lips - his impossibly perfect lips - and touch his hands - hands that could never truly hurt me ever and would never leave me. "I figure we can see if after all the miracles we've received since the beginning of August, if there's just one more out there that the universe has in store for us."


	11. Chapter 11

_February 17, 2016_

We made mutually agreed-upon rules.

For two people who had entered the end of September together with hope and the slight fear of a potential emotional armageddon, we'd found instead an emotional utopia. We didn't want to upset that balance and we wanted to let whatever was in store for our future come to us on its own.

There was no conversation of this being too soon, after only been living together for less than three months at the time. Our love didn't follow any traditional timeline or path, and there was no point debating one now. There was no, "Are you sure?" from me. I only had to look in her eyes to know she was.

There was biology and the knowledge that at forty-five years old all the proverbial eggs in her basket might be pretty well gone. There was a slim, statistical, one-point-six-percent chance that a woman her age could conceive naturally. But our two logical minds had become believers in fate and destiny and precarious journeys that finally lead us to each other. There would be no fertility tests, no donor eggs, no surrogacy. We wouldn't use ovulation predictors and become carefully timed machines when it came to sex only to be disappointed a couple weeks later.

We were kicking procreation old-school style, with a plethora of completely unprotected sex and faith in the universe that if this was meant to be, it would happen. And if after six months nothing happened, we'd explore adoption and we'd take whatever child came to us and love him or her with all our hearts, and that would be that.

Only it wasn't that easy, at least not for me, and I don't think it was easy for Emily either. She'd hold me to her, keeping me inside her body for endless loving minutes after I came, like she didn't want even a single sperm to be lost when I pulled out of her. And I think she prayed, or at least something was going on in her head, because she seemed so very close to me in those minutes, and also miles away in her mind.

And me. Well, she didn't know it, but I found it nearly impossible to fall asleep at the same time as her after we made love at night. After months of drifting off to sleep with our arms around each other at nearly the same time, I stayed awake a little longer. I hovered my hand over her pelvis, not touching her so as not to wake her, but holding it there, like the energy and love in my heart could make the journey from within me, down my arm, through my hand and into her uterus and create a child just by sheer force of will.

At the beginning of February, it ceased being about her giving me something I wanted so badly, and about me wanting it very badly for her. We'd gone to visit her father for the day, her father who was still doing well and was sticking with his sobriety, and when we got home, I heard Emily say, "Damn," from the other side of the bathroom door. She'd gotten her period - a light one, but one that told us she wasn't pregnant yet and gave us at least a little clue as to when the optimum time to have sex might be. She tried to hide her disappointment with a joke about remembering how much she hated tampons, but I saw it. I saw just how badly she wanted this, which shocked me to my core and made me fall in love with her all over again.

And then, a couple of weeks later, right about the time we were having such frequent sex that my legs were actually tired and my stomach muscles ached while chasing an unsub through the alleys in Richmond, the universe threw us a curveball.

It started with a phone call a little before five o'clock in this morning, the morning after I got home from Richmond.

"Derek. Phone," Emily mumbled sleepily while grabbing my hip and shaking me gently.

I popped my head up from my pillow and looked at my nightstand, where my phone sat, quiet and silent. "It's yours," I said, coming wide awake and knowing that her phone ringing at that ungodly hour could only mean an emergency - either personal or relating to her job and the security of the United States.

My first thought was of her father.

I watched her sit up in bed and reach for her phone, looking perplexed at the number on the screen. "Hello?" she answered. Then, " _Oui."_ Yes.

I watched her eyebrows raise and her forehead wrinkle and then I watched her face fall in sadness. Her hand reached out and touched my chest, resting over my heart. And then I watched her prattle away in hushed sadness...all in French.

She was asking questions, that much I could gather from her tone. I caught one word, _avion,_ and I knew she was talking about getting on a plane.

"What is it?" I asked worriedly when she got off the phone.

"Leon Bache," she replied while standing from the bed.

I searched my memory and it came back to me quickly. "The little boy you met in the safe house after the case in August? The one who though he was bad and dirty?" I asked sadly.

Emily nodded and choked up, wiping her eyes after she pulled on some underwear. "He tried to commit suicide, Derek. He's barely eight years old, and he tried to hang himself. I don't know all the details, only that he's had an incredibly rough few months since he was placed with a foster family in August. And his mom overdosed on heroin a week ago, even though he hadn't seen her since this all happened. I told him I'd check in on him from time to time, and I haven't really, except to give his social worker my number in case there were problems. And now he's in a hospital with a bruised larynx and rope burns around his neck and when the social worker got to the hospital, he asked for me."

I watched her shoulders shake and her hands fumble to button the jeans she pulled on.

"What about work?" I asked lamely, my mind still sleepy and my heart breaking for a little boy I'd never seen before.

"They knew when they hired me that there might be issues that came up from that last case that required me to go to Europe on occasion," she said softly as she pulled a sweater over her head.

I stood from the bed and started dressing.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Coming with you," I replied.

"You don't have to do that."

"Yes, I do," I said firmly. "Maybe me talking to him, to let him know I went through something similar and survived it, will help him. And I don't want you to go without me. That case and that little boy tore you up and I'm not going to stay in DC while you're in France dealing with something so emotional all alone."

I expected a retort, a bristling, "I can handle it." The old Emily would have done that, but not this Emily, the one who thought she might find weakness within her by needing someone, and only came out stronger on the other side. I got her gentle hand on my face and a brief kiss on the lips. "Thank you. The first flight out of Dulles is probably around seven o'clock. Hopefully there are two seats left."

And with that, we finished dressing in silence.

I felt it then, though I didn't voice it. It was that adrenaline rush, that unnamable speeding up of heart rate and the desire to fix something, to save someone, and to do it quickly. It was what I used to experience whenever there was a new case at work, and something I'd had a difficult time finding since I'd moved in with Emily. But there it was as I grabbed my go bag while Emily haphazardly threw clothing in a small suitcase, because of a little boy in a hospital bed who needed Emily, and I think even then I knew with every fiber of my being that he needed me, too.

I sent a text message to Hotch letting him know I was going to Paris and why. I figured he'd be sleeping, but he responded right away. "Be safe. Let me know if you need anything."

The flight to Paris from Dulles was full, but we managed to barely make it on a 6:15am flight to New York, and to catch a 8:00am flight to Paris, spending an exorbitant amount of money on two last-minute, first-class seats. They were the only seats available and Emily acted like it was no big deal. For me, it was the first time I'd ever flown first class, and the fanfare of good food and offers of mimosas and anything else we wanted seemed too bright for the bleakness we were flying to.

We slept, our hands clasped together, and arrived in Paris at around 8:30pm local time. We took a cab straight to the hospital and Emily called Leon's social worker, who was still there and said she would meet at the entrance.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting when I walked into that hospital room, having never seen Leon before. What I wasn't expecting was a child who looked so small and young, and so old and haunted at the same time. The hair was silky brown and curly, like Emily said it was, and the eyes were the bright blue that matched the contact lenses she wore as Irina, just as she described for me. But beneath those eyes were dark circles, like he hadn't slept in ages, and his frail looking arms were strapped to the bedside at the wrists.

And the bruises and rope burns on his neck stood out in stark contrast against his pale skin.

He zeroed straight in on Emily and whispered, "J'ai pas été très courageux."

Her eyes filled with tears immediately and she tried to blink them back as she took a seat in the chair next to his bed. "He says he wasn't very brave," she whispered to me as she took his slim wrist out of the velcro restraint and placed his hand between her own.

"Même les gens super courageux peuvent devenir si tristes qu'ils ne savent plus quoi faire," she whispered. And then she translated for me while Leon stared at her. _Even very brave people can get so sad that they don't know what to do._

I sat in the chair on the opposite side of the bed and darted my eyes between Emily and Leon. "Tell him," I said softly while placing my hand on his arm. He turned to look at me and flinched slightly at the touch, but then looked at my hand and face and relaxed again. I briefly glanced at the social worker and decided I didn't care anymore. My story wasn't anything to be ashamed about if it could help people now. "Tell him that a very bad man once did the same thing to me that happened to him. Tell him that I was sad for a very long time. Tell him that there were times I thought about wanting to die, and there were a couple of times I truly considered it, but that it can get better and that there is love and friendship and a good life out there for him. It just takes time to heal in his heart."

Sniffling, and her lip quivering, Emily tried to smile lovingly at me before nodding. She looked at Leon and started speaking in rapid French.

Leon blinked and stared at her when she stopped talking and then slowly turned his head back towards me. "You?" he asked, surprising me that he knew any English at all.

I smiled at his young face and nodded my head. "Yes."

He asked Emily a question in French and she responded. "FBI. Police."

He asked another question and she said, "When he was twelve until he was seventeen. De ses douzes ans jusqu'à ses dix-sept ans."

He turned his head back towards me and stared at my face. "Les enfants de mon école ont peur de moi. Ils croient que je vais leur faire ce qu'on m'a fait à moi. Leurs parents aussi pensent ça. Ils m'ont donné des surnoms méchants. Et les garçons me tapent dessus tout le temps."

"He says that the kids at school think he's going to try and touch them inappropriately, and that the parents think the same. They call him names. The boys hit him a lot."

We both looked at the social worker and she spoke in French to Emily. When she was done, Emily turned to me to translate, "The foster family he was with lived in a nice neighborhood and they were good people. But a few of the kids from the poor neighborhood where Leon lived were bussed into the same school he started at the end of October. She and his foster parents were not aware of just how bad he was being teased and bullied because he never told them. He has bruises on his ribs and stomach, from repeated punching. The boys who they think were doing it were picked up by the police today. It appears his mother was the one who told everyone where she lived what happened to Leon, while she was high on meth, and some kids overheard."

Leon was looking between Emily and me while she talked and I reached over to gently place my hand on his head. I wanted it then, I wanted _him_ badly. That adrenaline rush was all around me, like it was pushing me to refocus my life and find a new purpose within me. I think Emily saw it on my face right then, but she shook her head slightly at me. _Let's not talk about it here,_ she was telling me. But she wasn't saying, _There's no way._

A nurse came in at that point with a syringe, something to help Leon sleep I correctly assumed, because minutes later, his eyes that were staring intently at my face drifted shut. Emily gently put his wrist back in the restraint and we stood in unison.

The social worker drove us a few blocks to a hotel, and we were nearly silent on the drive. Emily conversed with the man at the front desk at the hotel and handed over a credit card for him to swipe. He handed her back a room key.

I'm standing here now at the hotel room window, staring blindly out at the lights of Paris at night, while Emily takes a shower. She kissed me before she went into the bathroom, but she didn't say anything. I know she's thinking things over in there, and I'm thinking things over out here, but my mind keeps finding other threads of thought. This is the first time I've ever been to Paris. This is the city near where Emily last set off in a sailboat with her father and headed to Rome, when she was thirteen. This is the city where Emily hid for seven months when I thought she was dead. I wonder if she stayed in this hotel or near here. There's a little boy in a hospital less than a mile away who needs us.

The bathroom door opens and a billow of steam follows a towel-wrapped Emily out of the shower. Her eyes are puffy, and I know she's been crying.

"What if I'm pregnant now and we just don't know yet?" she asks. "Or what if I'm not? Does taking him mean we stop trying?"

I sigh and gather her in my arms. "No," I breathe. "He'd be with us for almost a year before we had a baby, and I think he'd be okay by then, or at least much better."

"He's got so many issues, Derek. What if we try so hard and we still can't help him?" she asks from the safety of my arms, with her cheek resting on my shoulder.

"Do you really think there's anyone else out there that stands a better chance at helping him and loving him than the two of us?" I ask.

"No," she answers right away. She steps away from me and kisses me and says it again. "No. But it's not like we can take him home with us and put him in school and daycare afterwards right away."

"I'll take a leave of absence. I'll stay home with him. He'll teach me French and I'll teach him English and we'll take it one day at a time, just like you and I have been doing. We can do this, Emily." And I know we can, and I'm not even surprised at how quickly I put my job on the chopping block. Suddenly, for the first time since I joined the police academy in Chicago, the choice for what I want to do with my life is not being compelled by guilt, but by love and the deepest desire to help a child in a different way than I ever have before.

She sits on the edge of the bed and looks at me, smiling slightly, reading everything she needs to know in my face. "I'm not sure it's possible. France is a Hague Adoption Convention country. You have to be approved as an adoptive parent by the United States before you can put in an application to adopt in France. That's why I didn't want you saying anything in front of the social worker. What we need approved is called an I-800A form from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and an Article 5 letter to submit to France stating that Leon would become a legal resident in the US. With Hotch and Garcia and maybe Rossi's connections, given our jobs and the fact that our background checks are clear, I'm sure we could get those pushed through quickly without the necessary home studies and social worker visits."

I sit next to her and take her hand in mine. "I'm sure we could."

She nods, "But that's not really the problem. There are lists miles longs of people in France wanting to adopt. France hasn't issued an international adoption decree in well over five years."

"How do you know all of this?" I ask.

She leans her head on my shoulder. "After I flew Leon from Antwerp to Paris and handed him off to his social worker and foster parents, I couldn't get him out of my mind. I looked it up on the flight back to London."

I push her damp hair away from her face and turn her head towards me, lifting her chin slightly. I kiss her softly and hold her again in my arms. "So what do we need to do?" I ask.

She leans her forehead on my chest and says, "The Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs oversees international adoptions. Clyde would have had the connections we needed to push this through, but he's gone." She raises her eyes to look at mine. "But there's another possibility," she says with a slight tremble in her voice.

I watch her arm reach for her phone that's sitting on the small table next to the bed. "All roads led to here, right?"

I smile and feel my eyes tear up slightly, knowing what she's doing. I kiss her forehead and touch the soft skin of her neck and shoulders. "That's what we believe, isn't it?"

She smiles and nods once.

And I watch her slightly shaking fingers scroll through the contacts on her phone and place a call to her mother.


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N - Piano, choir, guitar, saxophone, trumpet: This is the competing musical practice that is now occurring in my house every evening. Writing with that in the background is ROUGH! Sorry for the delay!_

This is a long one and I went back and forth about how long to make it, but I wanted to stick with Emily's perspective for this one and needed to get to the point where I could switch perspectives. Thus, 7,700+ words later... ;-)

* * *

March 4, 2016

" _The last full moon of winter is called a Worm Moon, Lune," my father said to me._

 _I was five and a half years old, and we were in Paris visiting my grandfather. My mother was at some important dinner with him, and I was with my father. I remember being bundled in an ivory pea coat, with a cap on my head. I remember holding his hand and skipping down the bustling streets of Paris after dark while that full moon lit up the sky. I remember wrinkling my nose when he told me the name of that moon, and how he laughed lovingly at me._

" _It's not a very pretty name, but it was given that name by the Native Americans. That moon, the one that's shining above us tonight, was the moon that signaled to them that the winter thaw was upon them, and they could see the worm tracks in the ground. It let them know that spring was right around the corner - that there was fresh food and planting coming their way after months eating from their winter storage._

" _Spring!" I said happily while hopping over a puddle on the ground. "Flowers blooming and more time out in the boat!"_

" _And more time out on the boat," my father concurred while squeezing my hand._

I looked it up on my phone tonight, because I was curious, and it turns out that that night when I was walking with my father through the Paris streets was exactly forty years ago. I half expected when I came outside tonight and sat in the lounge chair on our master bedroom balcony that another worm moon would greet me. But the moon is waxing tonight, barely a sliver in the sky, and when I look it up on my phone I learn that the last full moon of winter won't come until March 23 this year, signaling a late spring. My mind is awash with thoughts of time, the universe, coincidence, parallels that sometimes happen in life, and miracles.

Perhaps the moon is signaling a late spring, but even though my breath is visible on this cold evening, I can smell spring in the air. I can feel it coming, feel the world wanting to blossom and grow and change in ways both predictable and unpredictable. I close my eyes, shutting out the stars and the small strip of moon in the sky and bundle my hands in the pockets of my jacket.

A couple of weeks ago, we accomplished in six days what would have typically taken six months, if we were lucky, if an international adoption decree was granted at all. We had a lot of help, from both strangers and friends we've had for years. And my mother.

We quickly came to the logical decision that all the paperwork would be for me only. According to the Hague Adoption Convention, a single person could adopt, or a married couple, but Derek and I adopting together in France was not going to happen. Because my mother was going to be the one going in and lighting a fire under the appropriate asses, and because of her dual citizenship in France, we knew I stood the best chance at this. It was the one thing that truly scared me, the responsibility that came with my name being the only one on the dotted line, even if I knew it was only on paper, and only temporary. Because Derek could adopt Leon once we were back in the States.

It was slightly ridiculous: my name had been on the dotted line of massive international undercover operations and it never caused me much anxiety. My name on the adoption decree of a small, sweet, hurting eight-year-old boy scared the ever loving crap out of me.

"We could fly back home, to Vegas, get married, and get back here within two days," Derek jokingly said when I got off the phone with my mother.

I looked at him then, to smile, and was shocked by the seriousness in his eyes. Not the flying to Vegas and getting married right then and there part, by the getting married at all part. He was absolutely serious. I'm not sure why it shocked me or why it felt like any different of a commitment than agreeing to live together and have a child together. I think it was that while I'd had dreams, brief wisps of thought and longing, that lived on the fringes of my subconscious from time to time about a long-term relationship and even being a parent, I'd never seen myself as the marrying type.

At the same time, there wasn't a vision in my mind anymore that saw myself alone in life; I couldn't even begin to imagine a life without Derek.

I touched his face and kissed him. Then we called Hotch and put the phone on speaker so we could both talk. It was a little before ten o'clock at night in Paris; a little before four o'clock in the evening in DC. Hotch listened and seemed absolutely supportive with the idea of Derek taking a leave of absence. He said he wanted to make some calls right then and there and he'd be in touch.

Derek took my phone from my hand and placed it back on the nightstand. He rubbed his thumbs gently over my eyebrows and forehead, smoothing the tension he saw there. He took in the nervous look in my eyes and kissed each lid before kissing my lips gently. I felt the towel around me loosen and fall from my torso to form a pool around my hips. There were butterflies knocking around in my stomach and my anxiety was on high alert - when I mentioned having a baby to Derek, or even adopting one, I figured I had months and months to mentally prepare. This was so fast. But I let his hands and his body soothe me, like they were so good at doing. I let the feel of his body surrounding me remind me that we could do anything together, and that we'd be okay.

Neither of us anticipated just how fast the team and my mother could work. We didn't know it then, but while Derek made love to me in that hotel room, my mother was already at the BAU, having gone straight there when she got off the phone with me. We didn't know that she, Hotch, Garcia, Rossi and even Reid were on the phone, contacting the necessary people, tracking down a family court judge Hotch knew, a judge who put Hotch in direct contact with the director of DC Child and Family Services - the entity who could issue emergency adoption approval. We didn't know that that director, after hearing the story, jumped right on board to start my paperwork and put Hotch in touch with an adoption agency that could represent me.

We didn't know that before we fell asleep that night in Paris, I'd already been given emergency approval as an adoptive parent in DC. We didn't know when we went back to the hospital early the next morning and had a heartbreaking conversation with Leon's foster parents in a sterile waiting room, that my mother was already reaching out to her connections at US Immigration, waking up people she knew to get what we needed. It wasn't even within the realm of our wildest possibilities that when we told the foster parents and the social worker that we were seeing what we could do about an I-800A form from immigration, but that I was already approved as an adoptive parent, that we weren't telling a little white lie at all.

The foster mother cried and clasped my hand and nodded at us, both she and her husband agreeing that what what would be best for Leon was a fresh start away from France or anyone who knew what happened to him, and that they would withdraw their intent to adopt should we obtain the necessary paperwork.

We received one text message from Hotch late that Thursday afternoon saying that things were in the works. We didn't know it then, that my mother had begged him to let her be the one to tell us that everything was done. We didn't know she was already on a chartered, private jet to France, an act of contrition and an apology sealed in a large manila envelope that contained everything we needed on the US end.

We spent the day with Leon in his hospital room. He mostly stared at us or blankly watched the television in his room, and didn't say much at all. We tried to engage him with some books we got from the library at the hospital; he closed his eyes and listened when I read to him. The biggest reaction we got that day was when Derek took the book from my hands and tried to read to Leon in French. He was abysmal with the accent and inflections as he stumbled through the words, and while Leon's eyes were closed, we both saw his lips turn up in what could possibly pass as a small smile.

There was no doubt that the little boy who would be released from the hospital the next day, back into the care of his foster parents temporarily, was very much depressed.

I was pretty much a ball of tension all day. Derek and I and the social worker agreed that we'd say nothing to Leon until it looked like us taking him was a real possibility. My head throbbed and every time I looked at Leon, which was frequently, my stomach did somersaults at the idea of taking him home with us and raising him - part excitement, part hope, part fear.

We stayed until visiting hours were over, and then we stayed a little longer than that, until a nurse told us it was time to leave. Leon was asleep at that point, and we were holding his hands. I turned my back when I saw the nurse put him in his wrist restraints again, feeling ill at the thought that that little boy had endured hell while being tied up or strapped down, and now he was being tied down again.

We left the hospital and found a brasserie; I was starving, but found it difficult to eat. We were quiet, contemplating our future and wondering if we could actually pull this off. We walked the chilly streets of Paris hand in hand for a good hour after we ate, and returned to our hotel a little after eleven o'clock that night, and when we walked into the lobby, my mother was waiting in a chair.

She stood and came towards me. She handed me the envelope. "We have an appointment in the morning with the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. I know the man we're meeting with, and I'm confident this will be approved."

I was stunned. I peered into the envelope and saw all the necessary paperwork there, signed and officially stamped - my approval as an adoptive parent, the necessary representation of an adoption agency in DC, the I-800A form and the letter we needed from US Immigration.

I blinked back tears and stared at my mother. She was quiet; she seemed smaller than I ever remembered seeing her, and she lacked the confidence she'd always shone to me and the world. I hated it. I hated that she looked that way, and I was conflicted by the the unstoppable empathy that rose in my heart, the genuine gratitude I felt, and the anger that still lay deep inside me when I saw her face.

She looked like she wanted to hug me; I could count the number of hugs I'd shared with my mother over the course of my life on both hands with fingers left over, and I wasn't anywhere near ready for that. I touched her shoulder gently instead. "Thank you," I whispered. "How did you do this so quickly?"

"Agent Hotchner and the rest of your friends got your approval as an adoptive parent right away, the first evening you called. And the rest…" she trailed off and shrugged, a humbleness I'd never seen in her, not wanting to take credit for the seemingly impossible feat she'd accomplished in just a handful of hours.

She booked herself into a room at the same hotel we were staying at, which was shocking in and of itself since she never stayed in the average hotel like the one in which we were currently staying. "I'll stay until everything is finalized, in case you need me, but I'll stay out of your way when you don't need me," she said quietly after she'd gotten her room.

I brushed the tears from my eyes as I watched her walk towards the elevators and clasped onto Derek's hand. When we got inside our hotel room, I collapsed on the hotel room bed with the documents, staring at my name all over the place. My heart knocked around in my chest and I felt anxious to the point of nausea again.

"You okay, Em?" Derek asked softly.

I nodded slowly, still staring at the paperwork that declared me a fit adoptive parent. Was I a fit parent? How the hell would I or anyone else know?

"Do you think these are real?" I asked Derek.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean did official people really approve all of this without ever having met me because of Hotch and my mother?"

Derek smiled sweetly at me, and took the papers from my hands, setting them on the nightstand. He collapsed on the bed next to me and wrapped his arms around me. "Yes, they're real, and yes, it was because of Hotch and Garcia and maybe Rossi and your mother, but it was because of you, too. You think they wouldn't vouch for you? You're going to be great. _We're_ going to be great."

I was nervous - beyond nervous. "He seemed so sad today," I whispered.

"I know. But he just needs to get settled and get some stability, and it will start getting better. He watches us both, and I think he likes us, even if he's not saying much right now. He's going to love you."

I raised my head to look in Derek's eyes, let my nervousness go for a few seconds, and imagined him as a father. I imagined living a life with him when he was a father, and the picture it created in my mind was so bright, so happy, so full of joy that it nearly took my breath away.

The next morning, my mother's confidence was back. She was in her element at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs. With her rapid-fire French and her imploring on my behalf, with her telling details about what happened to Leon - details that first clued me in to the fact that she'd spent some time in conversation with Hotch - and her fighting for exactly why I was the appropriate person to adopt Leon, the Ministry approved my forms.

It was a Friday, and we couldn't get all the court documents together that would be necessary to actually take Leon back to the US until Monday. But we did get approval to take him back to the hotel with us when he was released from the hospital. We called the social worker first, who was stunned by how quickly this had all happened. Then we called the foster parents and asked them if it would be okay. They were sad, but agreed. We asked if we could go talk to Leon first, and then they could meet us at the hospital.

My mother withered after we stepped back out onto the sidewalk, becoming sad and insecure with me again. She smiled slightly at me and walked away to get a cab of her own. My eyes tracked her as she walked slowly down the street; Derek didn't say anything, but he gave me a hug and kissed my head and sighed in my ear, absorbing some of the angst and sadness and confusion I was feeling when it came to my mother.

With my stomach rolling yet again, we got in a cab and went back to the hospital. We took up our positions on either side of Leon's hospital bed. We unstrapped his wrists and held his hands. I spoke quietly in French, saying something entirely different than what Derek and I had discussed on the cab ride to the hospital. I looked at that little boy's too-thin cherubic face, with the dark circles that were fading a little after getting some necessary sleep with the aid of drugs, and an inspired story came to me that I instinctively knew would get through to him.

"Leon, do you remember when I told you about how your name means the same as Lionel, and that Lionel was the cousin of Lancelot?" I asked him.

His blue eyes locked with mine and he nodded slightly.

"Did you know that when things got bad for Lionel, when he was sad and lonely and scared and all alone, a woman called the Lady of the Lake, along with Lancelot, took Lionel to the safety of her underwater kingdom where nobody could hurt him?"

He blinked and stared and slowly shook his head.

"Well, they did. And he grew up knowing he was cared for and loved, and no one could hurt him there." I paused and squeezed his hand and glanced at Derek. "Derek and I would like to take you back home with us, to live forever. We think you could start feeling safe with us and we know we can love you and care for you like you deserve. We would never hurt you."

Leon stared at me for several seconds before glancing at Derek. When he turned his head back towards me, there were tears brimming in his eyes and they eventually overflowed and dripped down his cheeks. "To America?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Will people know about what happened to me?" he asked, his cheeks turning pink and his eyes downcast and filling with tears.

"The only people who will know are friends of ours. They're like our family, and they are some of the people who helped rescue you. But no children will know. Derek would stay home with you until you learned English better and you got used to being there. You wouldn't go to school right away, but we have friends with children and you could get to know them. They're very nice boys, and they would never hurt you, either."

He was quiet for a couple of minutes, breathing softly and rolling things over in his mind. "Some English," he said, looking at Derek and speaking in English.

Derek grinned. "You know some English?"

Leon nodded seriously. "What about Lenora?," he asked me, back to speaking French, real concern in his voice for his foster mother.

I touched his cheek and smiled softly. "She cares about you very much, and she's so sad to let you go, but she thinks you coming with us would be the best thing for you."

He kept his eyes on me, and I watched his lip quiver slightly and fresh tears fall down his cheeks. "I'm scared," he whispered, "But I think I want to go with you."

The tears that I'd barely been containing since we walked into Leon's room rose to the surface. I smiled and nodded at the little boy. "Then you will," I said. "Can I give you a hug?"

Leon hesitated for just the briefest second before nodding. I wrapped my arms around his thin back and held him to me gently, and after a few seconds, he returned the hug. And then another hand was on my back while the other reached around me to rest softly on Leon's head - Derek's; solid and steady and conveying love with just the simplest of touches, the three of us were connected together for the first time and I stopped being quite so frightened.

Leon's foster parents showed up with his belongings, which weren't much - just a small suitcase. We stood back and emotionally watched while they said their tearful goodbyes to each other. I dug around in his suitcase until I found a turtleneck to cover the marks on his neck. We left the hospital that day with prescription sleep aids for Leon in case we needed them. We didn't plan to use them. We opted for a cot in our hotel room, rather than moving to connecting rooms. We were all emotionally exhausted that night, and it all felt very mechanical for me and like I was watching the whole thing from a great distance.

That was until the middle of the night, after we'd all fallen asleep, the bathroom light on and the door cracked, Leon with his cot pushed right next to our bed, and his hand in mine. Both Derek and I were restless and worried about falling into a deep sleep. We were both in pajamas, which was very different for us and something we'd have to get used to. I woke several times during the night, to check on Leon myself, or because Derek moved from behind me to peer over my shoulder and check on him.

At about three o'clock in the morning, I opened my eyes and panicked immediately when I saw an empty cot. I sat up and found him curled at the foot of our bed, his eyes wide open and on me.

"Are you okay?" I whispered. "Did you have a nightmare?"

He stared blankly at me and it took Derek telling me that I'd spoken in English for me to realize it through my sleep-hazed mind. So I repeated the questions in French.

Leon nodded.

I wasn't sure if it was right or wrong. He legally wasn't ours and, admittedly, I was a little leery of scaring him, or of him taking my intentions the wrong way given what happened to him the past summer. But it felt right. In my heart, it felt good.

I placed my hand on Derek's chest and pushed lightly so he'd move his body and scoot back in the bed. I reached for the blanket on Leon's cot. Then I moved over, pressing my back against Derek's chest, wrapping our blankets over me and patting the space on the side of the bed. I didn't quite feel right about letting him crawl under the covers with us, and I thought the extra barrier might help him not second guess my intentions.

He crawled slowly, his eyes drifting between mine and Derek's, like the journey from the foot of the bed to the head of the bed was miles long and filled with landmines. But eventually he made it, and he laid down beside me. I pulled his blanket over him. His body was rigid, and I wasn't sure if it was just about this past summer; I thought then that he probably had very little experience with anyone being affectionate with him in any loving, innocent way.

He turned on his side, his back facing me, and I reached my hand up to touch him, resting it gently on his flannel-covered spine. "My father had a boat," I found myself whispering in French. "We'd sail for days at a time when I wasn't in school, sometimes weeks. And when it was cold, or if I had a bad dream, I'd lay next to him like this, and I knew he would protect me. We'll protect you, Leon. I promise. You can sleep. You're safe."

His breathing had quickened slightly while I spoke, and then it slowed down again, but I knew he wasn't asleep. After several long minutes where my heart thudded and ached, and Derek's hand gently rested on my hip in reassurance, I felt the little body in front of me shift. Another, slow, precarious trek - a few inches back towards me - until his body was only separated from mine by our pajamas and two blankets. I felt his body relax, and I blinked back the tears in my eyes. Derek's lips brushed my shoulder and the back of my neck. I felt his head settle back down on his pillow, and eventually I relaxed, too. We all slept.

The weekend, the court proceedings on Monday - they all went by in the blur. My mother was there, but kept her distance. I tried not to look at her much, my stomach in knots whenever I did. Derek and I tried to get to know the little boy who was with us, but he was mostly quiet and not giving us much of a reaction to anything. But he crawled from his cot into bed beside me in the middle of the night every night, and he stopped looking like it was frightening to him when he did so.

The social worker stopped by the hotel that Monday night with an additional box of Leon's things - copies of his medical records, a copy of his original birth certificate, a few pictures of him when he was a baby and toddler that must have been culled in his mother's hovel, and a small wooden box. His mother's ashes.

I was accumulating a collection of ashes, it seemed.

That Tuesday morning I woke up with Derek's arm around me and my arm around Leon, and his sweet face sleeping beside me, the dark circles under his eyes all but gone.

I called in a favor of my own, so that we could avoid crowds and customs. An Interpol jet was waiting for us at an airfield outside of Paris at noon that day.

Before we left, I finally made my way to my mother's hotel room and knocked on her door. When she answered, I didn't have a lot of words. I gave her the rare hug that I knew she wanted since she'd arrived in Paris, I whispered "Thank you," several times over. I asked her if she wanted to fly back with us, but she pulled away from me, touched my cheek and declined.

"I'm going to stay in Paris for a couple of weeks," she said. "But can I call you when I get home?"

I hesitated only a fraction of a second before I nodded. "Yes."

I turned to go, but my mother called out quietly. "Emily," she said, and I turned. She had tears in her eyes. "He seems like a really sweet boy. You'll be good for him. You have it in you, more than I ever did."

"Have what in me?" I asked.

"The ability to allow yourself to love people," she said.

I held back the absurd laugh that wanted to bubble up from my lips, because I didn't want her to think I was laughing at her. I smiled instead. "Only recently," I replied.

She shook her head. "No. You always had it. You just forgot how for a long time. That was my fault."

And with that she closed the hotel room door. I wanted to knock again, and I didn't want to at the same time. I wanted my heart to stop racing and my head to stop hurting and my stomach to stop fluttering in nerves. I wanted things to settle down, and I knew to do that, I needed to get home, not attempt to converse and stir things up with my mother at that moment.

So we flew home, and we got some genuine smiles out of Leon then, when we left Paris behind us. Relieved smiles, I think. And smiles of trust - we said we'd take him and we did. This wasn't temporary, and there was no going back. He seemed content with the permanence of it. He fell asleep on Derek's lap in the middle of the flight, his head resting on Derek's shoulder, and Derek and I just stared at each other, and then tears filled his eyes.

"Thank you," he whispered to me.

I shook my head. "Thank _you._ "

I stayed home the remainder of that week, and we kept Leon busy. If you're a person - child or adult - who doesn't speak much English, and you want to explore a city in the United States, there's really no place better than Washington DC. Much of what you want to see is along a strip, and by that Sunday, Leon could pretty much point out the direction to his favorite museums.

He was slowly coming out of his shell, and as his comfort grew with us, his depression slowly faded. We knew we needed to get him into therapy, sooner rather than later, and Penelope had already dug up the names of two reputable child therapists who spoke French, but we wanted to give him a couple of weeks. We knew once therapy started, there would be necessary emotional upheaval, an upheaval Leon needed to work through things, but we wanted him to have a little foundation with us first.

I approached language with him like my father approached it with me when I was young. Leon would ask me questions in French, and I'd respond first in English, then in French, then in English again. And he tried to mimic my English words. I read age-appropriate chapter books to him in English, bits at a time, and told him to squeeze my hand when he heard a word he recognized. When it was a new word he recognized, I'd pause and talk to him about it.

Derek had his own approach. He went to a nearby bookstore and bought up every interesting picture book that would appeal to an older child, mostly non-fiction. They'd spend hours reading together during the day, when we weren't out exploring the city.

And the language came, little by little. Not a lot of words, but the necessities at first. Five or ten new words a day that Leon would interject with his French. And at night, every night in the middle of the night, Leon would creep from his room that was once our den into our room, and snuggle up beside me.

This past Monday, I returned to work, with nerves again about leaving Derek with Leon for the day when Leon didn't speak much English. But Fran flew in later that morning, and I knew the two of them with Leon would be better than okay. And they were. We all were. I came home in the evenings to a genuinely happy, if quiet, little boy who smiled and hugged me and told me about his day, to a kiss from Derek and a smile from Fran.

Sometimes I looked at Leon during dinner. His eyes would travel around the table in awe, like he didn't quite know what this was, this joyful, relaxed, loving foursome around a kitchen table. Sometimes I wanted to lean over and say, "Tell me about it, kid." We'd both been deprived of that particular tranquility in our lives.

We were becoming something of a family, and we were all, Fran included, falling in love with Leon. The team held back, because we didn't want to overwhelm Leon with people; we wanted him to be more settled and comfortable first. Fran was enough, for now. I didn't call my father, not just then, for the same reason, and also because I didn't know quite what might set him off. Spring would be here before we all knew it, the family who owned the house where Andrew stayed would return, and my father would have to go elsewhere. I wanted that decision to be a logical discussion, and didn't want me telling him that I'd adopted a child to make him run away.

Today rolled around, and Fran and Derek and Leon had their sights set on Colonial Williamsburg.

"Do you want us to wait and go this weekend instead, so you can come to?" Derek asked me as we were crawling into bed the night before.

I shook my head. I was completely emotionally wiped out, and the thought of a total of five hours on the road, and an extensive day of walking after working all week was not appealing. "No. You guys go. Have fun. We can go back together as a family sometime. I'm thinking a relaxing weekend at home and around Georgetown with you all sounds great."

"I'm thinking of staying for dinner instead of fighting the traffic. We probably won't be home until around nine. Will you be okay?"

I smiled at him. "I think I'll live." Actually a few hours alone at home, maybe with a visit with JJ first, sounded divine.

Derek nodded and wrapped his arms around me. We were both asleep within minutes.

I don't think we every really forgot about the date, not entirely. I think we were both just so wrapped up in getting Leon back home with us, and getting him settled, that it wasn't on the forefront of our mind. Derek wasn't working, and I doubted he'd been looking at a calendar much. I was working, but my mind was on what was going on with Derek and Leon a lot of the time. And, I knew from experience that there was only so much your mind could expand and take on as a priority, and for over two weeks, Leon had been it.

But I really took in the date this morning at work. I looked at my Outlook calendar and my meetings for the day and March 4, 2016 glared at me. My last period, the first one I'd had in over a decade because I was one of those fortunate people who experienced no bleeding while using an IUD, had come on February second.

I shuffled through papers at work, my stomach in knots, which wasn't unusual since it had been like that since I'd gotten the phone call from Leon's social worker. I tried to look like I was accomplishing something. I was less than stellar at my morning meeting, but still passable.

At lunch, I scurried to the closest drug store and bought a pregnancy test, thinking of the improbability and impossibility of the whole thing. The paper bag that held the pregnancy test mocked and taunted me the rest of the day while I was in my office, but I couldn't bring myself to take it. I got through another meeting where the group planned to cut out at five o'clock on the dot in order to go grab a drink after work.

"No, thank you," I told them. "I've got a mountain of work to catch up on from when I was out."

That wasn't a lie, but I wasn't thinking about that backlog. I was thinking about the paper bag in my office.

When the office cleared out and I pretty much had the place to myself, I had a standoff with that paper bag.

" _It's not possible,"_ I said to the recycled material.

" _How do you know?"_ the bag challenged.

Feeling moderately on the brink of a psychotic break, I rolled my eyes at myself. I grabbed the bag and walked down the deserted hallway to the bathroom. I only realized my hands were shaking when I tried to unbutton my pants. I only realized my heart was beating so rapidly and my breathing was shallow and fast when I took the box with test out of the bag and crumpled it; the noise of that crumpling paper competed with my breathing and the thudding rush of blood in my ears from my pulse.

 _Two minutes_ , I read on the instructions. _It's simple. Pee on a stick for a few seconds, hold the stick for two minutes, plus sign means pregnant. I'd know in two minutes._

Trying to relax my bladder enough to pee could have become a new Olympic sport, but I finally managed it.

And I didn't have to wait two minutes.

By the time I pulled the stick away from my urine stream and finished peeing and wiped myself with my free hand, that plus sign was already plain as day.

I didn't cry. I'm not sure I breathed. All I could think about was two and a half weeks of nausea that I thought was nerves and fear and anxiety, and how it didn't make sense given the timeline of things. And then I told myself maybe all of that really was nerves and fear, and I'd wake up tomorrow morning puking in a toilet with actual pregnancy symptoms. Then I thought about the amount of hormones in my blood that must be surging through me to make that positive sign show up in just seconds.

And then I think I started hyperventilating.

Eventually I calmed down enough to get my pants back on. I put the cap on the pregnancy test and pocketed it, and threw the box it came in and that paper bag away. I was experiencing moderate shock; every time Derek and I had sex, I'd hold him to me and inside me and make a million wishes on the stars in the sky that this would work, but there was always a part of my subconscious, the realist in me, who said it never would. That I was too old and it was too late.

In the pocket of my suit pants I had a pee-soaked stick that was telling me I was not too old and it was not too late, and I couldn't totally wrap my mind around it.

I got as far as my car, but I didn't turn the keys in the ignition. I took out the pregnancy test again. I turned on the overhead light in my car. I tilted the test one way and another, looking at it from under the dome lights, making sure that plus sign was there at every angle. It was vibrant and clear and definitely there.

I took out my phone to call Derek, and instead ended up calling Dr. Craig. She'd been my doctor for years when I was with the BAU, and had given me her cell phone number only recently, when I came back and told her about my possible HIV exposure during a case. I didn't second guess calling her then, thinking she'd probably already have left her clinic.

Which she had. But she answered her cell phone. When she found out it was me, she was concerned. When I told her I was staring at a positive pregnancy test and freaking out, she laughed kindly. "That's normal, Emily." she said.

When I told her that I was confused about the timeline and I didn't know which end was up and started babbling, she told me to take a deep breath. She said she'd barely just pulled away from the clinic and would I like to meet her back there.

Yes, I liked that very much.

"Am I keeping you from anything?" I asked her.

"Only my husband and his friends and their obnoxious first-Friday poker game. Trust me, this is much preferable."

I actually managed to laugh at that, but the laugh sounded strange to my ears.

That was how I'd ended up this evening in an otherwise deserted clinic, with only me and Dr. Craig and a transvaginal ultrasound wand inside me.

"When did you say you had your period?" Dr. Craig asked.

"February second, but it was light. It lasted only a couple of days." I responded numbly, my heart racing, thinking this was all a big mistake and it wasn't real.

Dr. Craig adjusted the wand inside me slightly and looked at the monitor. I watched her smile and felt hopeful again. I watched her use her right hand to reach for the computer mouse. I watched and listened to her click, click, click. "When you get pregnant, a lot of blood rushes to your cervix. Sex can cause bleeding in those circumstances where the penis hits the cervix. Plus your hormones probably weren't totally stabilized after having the IUD removed yet. Both things can cause non-concerning bleeding. Because February second would have been a little too late for implantation bleeding."

"What?" I asked. I was slightly confused and hopeful and tears stung my eyes.

Dr. Craig turned the monitor more fully towards me. Her finger pointed to the screen. "That, Emily, is your baby. This is the head, and this is the torso. And that fluttering you see right there is the heartbeat. The heartbeat of an eight-week old fetus."

My eyes zeroed in on that fluttering that I could only describe as being like the wings of a hummingbird; a rapidly pulsing little light that shocked me and took me in and pulled me under until I didn't feel like I could come up for air.

"It looks like you conceived around January sixth. It's almost like your body was just waiting for the moment," Dr. Craig said with a voice that sound like it was underwater with me and down a dark tunnel.

"Uh huh," I think I murmured, still staring at the screen.

"You were probably having pretty frequent sex around the beginning of February in order to get pregnant. If there was a lot of pressure on your cervix, that's probably the reason for your bleeding because I don't see a polyps there and you're healthy otherwise," I heard her say.

 _Yes, well. Derek is quite well-endowed and that pressure against my cervix is something I never thought I'd enjoy until it turned me into a crazy, screaming woman._

I didn't know I'd said that out loud until I heard Dr. Craig laugh lightly and felt her hand pat my leg. Even that didn't get a reaction from me, even though I'd probably have otherwise blushed.

What finally tore my eyes away from that pulsing light on the screen was when Dr. Craig said, "The estimated due date is September 28."

 _Lune des moissons. The harvest moon. Good things to come. A harvest in my heart._

I ripped my eyes away from the screen. Suddenly it felt very, very real and very, very wrong to be there without Derek.

"What did you say?" I asked her in a whisper with tears in my eyes.

"September twenty-eighth. That's the estimated due date," she said with a smile on her face.

It all crashed over me then - me, my life, the strange twists and turns in the universe, Leon and Derek and the way my body was reaching for something long before my mind or heart could even grasp onto it.

"I need to go," I said. "Thank you. Thank you so much for coming back tonight and doing this for me, but I need to go home. I should be doing this with Derek."

Dr. Craig removed the wand from me and nodded. She smiled at me, "We'll call this one unofficial. Let's make an appointment for you for next week so you two can come in together. We'll discuss your plans then, about visits and prenatal tests and everything else. But things look good, Emily. Really, really good. Perfect. And the odds of you miscarrying after seeing a viable heartbeat are significantly reduced. But because of your age, steer clear of any sex that irritates your cervix for the time being. We can discuss that more next week."

I nodded and sat up on the table and she handed me some tissues. I watched her hand reach down below the computer screen and come up with a picture, which she handed to me.

I made it home, to our dark and quiet rowhouse on the water, and I made my way upstairs. I searched for full moon dates on my phone.

The harvest moon in 1970 was on September 28th, but the harvest moon for 2016 is September 23rd; not a direct parallel, but close enough.

I'm not sure how long I stay outside with the sliver of moon above me, the moon that will grow until it's full and the last moon of winter shines brightly in the sky. My hands are in my jacket pocket, the fingers of my right hand clasped around the pregnancy test. The ultrasound picture is inside my jacket, over my heart, a heart that is stretching and growing and figuring out a way to absorb all the love that's in my life, and the love that's scheduled to come in the fall.

There's Derek's amazing mother, and a little boy I already love so much, and Derek, in a car somewhere on the highway right now making their way home to me. There's the noise below me outside, of people on the streets of Georgetown enjoying their Friday evening. If I can tune their energetic voices out, I can just barely hear it, the gentle lapping of the Potomac, a river that leads to the sea.

I take my left hand from my jacket pocket and move it under both my jacket and shirt. I trail my fingers lightly below the waistband of my pants until they settle on my pelvis. _I'm really pregnant. It wasn't too late,_ I tell myself.

I close my eyes and wait for the sound of Derek's car to pull up in the driveway.


	13. Chapter 13

_March 5, 2016_

By the time Carl Buford came into my life, I'd already learned the fine art of clenching my jaw and getting through my days. With my father gone, I was the veritable whipping boy for the neighborhood; the one the kids taunted because I had a white mother. The one who wouldn't put up my fists and fight at first, because I didn't want to heap another worry on my mother's plate.

I held my head high, I ignored the teasing and terrible names, I let people push me around. I was small then. Scrawny. I suffered physical and emotional abuse on a daily basis, and I figured out how to get myself together before I walked in my door in the afternoons or evenings. Churches were good; they were nearly empty on weekday afternoons, and the bathrooms offered a sanctuary where I could wash my face, dust myself off, and get myself to the point where I could walk in the front door with a smile on my face.

My mother wasn't entirely unaware of how difficult things were for me, even though she was depressed for a long time after my father was murdered. She actually worked herself out of her depression enough to not only recognize that I needed more support than she could give, she went out and found it for me.

She found it for me in the local rec center, and one Carl Buford who promised he would look after me and help me along. I never faulted her for that; I knew from the very start that if I had just told her what was going on, she would have literally killed him to protect me.

But I never told her.

At first, I didn't find much inappropriate in our contact, but looking back now, I realize his grooming of me was methodical and well-practiced. The biggest issue in our household was money; my mother received survivor's benefits, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough when she couldn't work because just getting out of bed was challenge enough, and it wasn't enough when she had three growing children who needed things, particularly two older girls who were in high school with college on the horizon.

The first time I was truly alone with Carl, after I'd already known him for three months and thought he was the next best thing to my father, a wonderful man I missed daily, it started.

We'd been outside tossing a football around and playing a friendly game with some other kids. No one teased me at the rec center, and they wanted me on their team. What I lacked in size at the time, I made up for in speed and steady and sure hands. Carl always played with us. That day, he was on my team, and we won handily, Carl throwing me the pass that I caught spectacularly to score the decisive touchdown.

He brought me up to his office after that. He gave me some water and a snack. He lifted a bag out from under his desk. He reached inside and showed me the contents - a cheerleading uniform, exactly what Desiree needed to join the team and my mother had told her just two nights before that there wasn't money for.

After displaying the items, Carl sat next to me on the couch in his office. He turned his body and trailed his fingers over my face and then rested his hand on my shoulder. Nervous, but not totally aware than anything was wrong yet, I nodded when he asked, "Don't you want to bring that home to your sister?"

On the wings of my nod, his hand went to the hem of the shorts I was wearing, they trailed underneath and brushed my thigh for several second, and then they trailed up farther. What I remember most about that day was the erection I got, and how I felt like I was a perpetrator as much as he was because my body reacted to him.

My knowledge of sex at the time was minimal, and my knowledge of right and wrong when it came to sex was cloudy. I knew about good touches and bad touches, and I knew that surely must have been bad, but I was reacting, and it didn't feel bad. Scary, but not bad. And Carl told me if it was wrong, it wouldn't feel good. He told me that if anyone found out, they'd call me worse names than they had before. He told me my mother and sisters would think I was terrible and they'd be ashamed of me. I remember feeling like I was an equal participant. I remember absorbing Carl's words: "I love you and this is how I want to show you."

I remember stopping at a church on the walk home and going into the bathroom to wash my face. I remember dipping my fingers in the holy water in the vestibule when I was done. I remember that before I made the sign of the cross, I wiped that holy water on my shorts, not feeling worthy of it. I brought the bag with the cheerleading uniform home to my sister and she cried and laughed and hugged me.

My mother asked me, "How did you get it?"

And I clutched my shorts where they were still damp with the holy water and shrugged. "Someone donated it today. I helped Carl sort through the donations after football practice and he said I could take my pick of something."

I remember my mother hugging me and telling me what a generous boy I was.

And I was a very generous boy, because that first time with Carl gave way to more times with him that gradually escalated, and the gifts I received for my compliance and silence kept pace. The first time I let him give me a blowjob, I went home with a sealed envelope for my mother; it contained a $100 gift certificate to the grocery store. The first time I returned the favor, with my stomach rolling and feeling like I'd never be clean again, I went home to tell Sarah that if she wanted a summer scholarship to the theater arts camp she wanted to attend, Carl would make it happen.

How could I tell anyone at that point? How could I tell my mother who was slowly making her way back to us that all the things that had come to us just when we needed them came because of what I did with Carl Buford? How could I ever tell anyone, ever, what I did with him?

The simple answer was that I couldn't. I just needed to keep getting through until I was gone.

I did a pretty good job of it, until one night, when I was fifteen. It was the first time Carl anally penetrated me in any way, that time with his fingers. And when he was done, when I'd bit back the tears through an orgasm that left me more ashamed than I'd ever felt, I left. And I took out all my shame on the neighborhood kids who had teased me right after my father died. And I got arrested.

It was Carl who bailed me out. It was Carl who told me there was only one way to make sure my mother didn't worry. He told me he could make it all go away, the arrest record and any trouble with the police. He told me I was destined for a college scholarship if I could just keep my head on straight. He told me I was the key to my mother happiness again, if I could just be okay and go to college and make something of my life. He said he'd make it all happen if I just kept my mouth shut.

And I did. I was silent while he raped me that first time. I was silent as I made the slow walk home, feeling like I couldn't put my legs together and move correctly. I was silent when I went into the church nearest our house and went into the bathroom. I was silent while I wiped myself and pushed the fluids out of me, blood and semen. I was silent while I washed my face and I was silent as I made my way back out.

I remember turning towards the altar. I remember looking at Jesus on the cross. I remember speaking the only words I'd said since Carl bailed me out of jail. "Where are you?" I whispered to that wooden man on the cross.

I remember losing my faith in everything that day and I just let it go. I let God go, and I let Carl go and I went into a numb place in my heart where I would let Carl Buford fuck me and almost not feel a thing, just counting down the days until I was too old or went to college and he moved onto someone else. And I remember wanting that back then, actually wanting someone to suffer like I had, not because I wanted him to experience my emotional and physical turmoil necessarily, but because I felt so alone and I just wanted someone else to understand.

When I finished college and finished my JD, it was time to decide what I wanted to do with my life. It was a true testament to how the right manipulation can make you do the unimaginable. I joined the Chicago police force. I packed my guilt and shame into a suitcase in my heart, and I locked it away. I policed a city and kept people safe while there was a man right near me whom I knew was doing unspeakable things to another child.

To admit that or acknowledge it at all would mean admitting to the fact it happened to me, and I couldn't do that. I made it through six years on the force pushing down my guilt. Then I was approached about an undercover assignment, and I took it.

When that ended, eighteen grueling months later, I decided to move away. I decided I couldn't face Chicago. I decided to join the FBI. I packed the guilt of not ever saying anything, along with my clothes and personal items, into three suitcases, and I moved to DC.

The first time I ever truly considered talking details about what happened to me, it came at the end of a case with the BAU in 2007. It rushed at me on the jet, when I was staring into the eyes of a woman I'd felt more connected with from the moment I met her than I ever had with any other person ever. In the end, I didn't talk about it. It was an appropriate moment, when Emily was talking about how different we could possibly be from the people we profiled and chased. But I couldn't bring myself to do it back then, to talk about shame and guilt and the confusion I felt when I thought about how different I was from the people we chased. How different was I, really? I'd allowed crimes to continue against innocent children for decades because I couldn't bring myself to admit what had happened to me.

The words eventually came out. I think I knew from the moment I met her that she could be my salvation. The words started when we were Theydon Garnon together, and they continued when she came back to DC. All those many long weeks when we clutched our bodies to each other, where there was only skin and soul and she was too worried about possible HIV exposure for anything else, we talked. She told me every detail about her father leaving and what life looked like for her after that, weaving the story about being in the FBI, and then joining Interpol, and then coming back to the FBI. She told me the nitty gritty details about Ian Doyle, and I told her the nitty gritty details of Carl Buford.

She didn't run away. She didn't look at me differently. If anything, she looked at me like she loved me even more than she had before. She didn't tell me I should feel guilty or ashamed. She smoothed her hands over my chest. She touched my face. She told me I was the best human being she'd ever known, and that it was okay. That I'd done the best I could and that there was no shame in that, that sometimes we could only save ourselves by whatever means we had, and we had to let go of the paths we took to survive.

"Did you ever feel you weren't doing the absolute best you could given what you had to work with?" she asked me sometime in early November.

"No. But I always knew my best was wrong. I should have told someone. I could have spared many young boys the same fate I'd experienced."

"You could have. You're right. But we can only operate with our own deck of cards, Derek. Yours was self-preservation and righting your wrongs in a removed, extrinsic way. You _did_ save people. You've saved thousands of people from terrible fates in your career. And that's okay. It's enough to grasp onto and let go of the guilt that eats away at you."

I let those words wash over me, and I tried to believe them, but I only totally did when Emily looked at me in New Year's Eve and said she wanted to try and get pregnant. A woman who knew the deepest secrets that I always felt would be my ruination loved me. Loved me completely and wanted to have a baby with me.

Her declaration of wanting to get pregnant healed me so completely, in a way I never dreamed was possible.

The first night in Leon's hospital room, she looked me in the eyes and knew how badly I wanted him. And she let her feelings be known - she wanted him, too. She wanted him for me, so I could help heal someone in a way I think I always needed to do, but she wanted him for herself, too, because she had a tremendous capacity for love that she'd held in check for years, and she wanted to share it with that little boy who needed us so badly.

She wanted it for both of us together, for the chance to finish something we'd only ever started; we'd slayed numerous bad guys, but had never been able to take the victims into our hearts before.

When Leon came home with us, I told myself that he was enough - the little boy with bright eyes who seemed open to us. I told myself that maybe he already was our miracle. I told myself that Leon and me and Emily could make a family. I didn't want to give up on a baby, but I knew the chances were so slim, and I knew the energy in the universe, or God, or fate, or circumstance had given us a child in the form of an eight year old boy who slowly was learning to trust, and to smile, and to let us love him.

In my decades-long quest for absolution, I felt that someone had given it to me in the form Emily, and a boy who spoke little English but was comfortable leaning his slight frame against me while I read to him. I wanted to love him into a human being who didn't carry around guilt or shame his whole life. And if that's all I ever got with Emily, that would be enough.

I think I told myself that so I wouldn't be disappointed when Emily couldn't get pregnant. I told myself that so frequently after we brought Leon home, that I stopped considering the date on the calendar.

Last night, when we came home from Colonial Williamsburg, Leon was asleep in the backseat of my car, and my mother wasn't far behind him. While Leon was fascinated by the displays of mock sword fights during the day, and the people in costumes, and the music at Chowning's Tavern during dinner, what he really loved during the day were the hands-on activities. He, along with my mom and I, had spent hours working in the colonial garden and learning how to lay bricks with old-fashioned tools.

He really needed a shower, but he was passed out when I pulled up at the rowhouse. I lifted him from the backseat and Emily was there, waiting for us at the front door.

My mother touched her arm and said she was going to head up to bed. Emily stood on tiptoe to kiss Leon's cheek. He stirred enough to look at her and murmur, "Fun," one of the English words he'd said several times during the day.

When I leaned over to kiss Emily's cheek; it was cold. "Have you been outside?" I whispered.

She nodded. "On the balcony."

I took in her jacket, her red cheeks and her eyes and realized she looked like she'd been crying. But then she smiled at me, and I was confused. The date had rushed at me that evening on the drive home, and I immediately assumed her tears were because she'd maybe gotten her period, but her smile said she was…something. Something I'd never seen on her face before.

I wanted to get Leon in bed before we talked, so I headed towards the stairs and she followed me. The two of us got him out of his dirty clothing and into pajamas, and he only woke up a little when we finally got him tucked into his bed.

"Je souhaite que vous y étiez," he whispered to Emily.

She smiled at him, "Next time. I promise I'll be there next time. I love you. You sleep now and you can tell me all about it in the morning." Then she repeated her sentences in French.

She tucked him in, and I turned on the motion sensor in his room, the one that dinged in our bedroom should he move to a standing position. It wasn't that we believed he'd hurt himself now that he was with us; all signs pointed to the fact that he wouldn't, but we didn't want to be naïve either. In the ten days he'd been home with us, that alarm would ding only once in the middle of the night; seconds later he was in our doorway and innocently crawling into bed next to Emily, sometime around three o'clock in the morning every night.

Emily took my hand and led me to our bedroom. She locked the bedroom door. She sat me on the edge of the bed and stood before me. Her fingers trailed over my eyebrows and mapped my entire face. My heart started hammering, trying to read her. I steeled myself for her telling me she'd gotten her period and tried to prepare my body for a calm, loving reaction. But a part of my heart reached for the improbability before she said it out loud, when she was staring at my face and looking at me in a way no person ever had – a love so all-encompassing that it defied reality.

She opened and closed her mouth several time, quickly, and a few rapid beats of my heart later, she whispered, "I'm pregnant, Derek."

Those three words knocked the wind out of me.

I thought my life had changed when I was kidnapped. I thought it had changed again when Emily was the one who rescued me and we'd found each other again, a paradise amidst horror. It twisted and turned again in a positive direction when she came back from London like Clyde had said she would. It shot off into an entirely different stratosphere when she asked me to live with her, and had morphed yet again when we she said she wanted to try and get pregnant.

Bringing Leon home had been more than I'd ever hoped for in life already, and now this. The nearly impossible. And it was ours, right there in front of me, more than I ever thought I deserved in life, and everything I ever wanted, being given to me from a woman I'd loved more wholly than any other and never thought I'd have.

She was handing me something, and I saw it was a pregnancy test. Still in shock, I reached slowly to take it. The plus sign on that white stick blurred because of the tears in my eyes.

"I called Dr. Craig, because I was scared and confused. The test turned positive nearly instantly. I never had a period in February. It was just innocuous bleeding, probably because I was already pregnant and blood was rushing to my cervix and we were having sex so frequently."

The words were said in a rush and I was trying to keep up, and then there was something else in her hands that she was trying to give me. "I'm sorry. You should have been there. Dr. Craig says we can go back Monday during my lunch. I didn't think, I didn't even dream that I'd be so far along. I didn't think I'd see a heartbeat. We should have seen that the first time together. I'm so sorry."

My eyes zeroed in on the fuzzy picture in her hand for a second, and the small shape that looked like a peanut. _Our baby._

Emily and I had been tossing around the word _miracle_ for several weeks by that point. It was a word I had a difficult time reconciling inside myself. The definition of the word literally means that there's a deity out there somewhere that's helping make things happen. It's a word that I'd long hated, from the time I was a child and gave up on the idea of God saving me. If there was a God out there, where was He when I was suffering? Where was He when Leon or anyone else was?

When I mentioned that to Emily, sometime around the middle of January - which meant, if I was reading the ultrasound picture correctly, that she was already pregnant back then - she'd held me. "I know. I know what you mean and I feel the same way. But maybe we make our own miracles. Maybe we make choices and open ourselves to possibilities and love and that's a different kind of miracle that takes no external force. It's a slim improbability we embrace and if it comes to fruition, it's a miracle. Maybe think of the word that way."

It was one of those times when she was holding me inside her, her arms and legs wrapped around me, and my head buried in her neck. We let that be our new definition of the word, and we hoped for that miracle, a miracle not from the hands of a deity, but from two people who loved so completely and unconditionally and wanted something so much, even when faced with nearly insurmountable improbability. When she said those words, little did we know the miracle we wanted was already taking root and growing inside of her.

There had been many tears and laughter over the past few months. The tears had been understandable; tears of relief and fear and joy and healing. But they were nothing like that night when she told me she was pregnant. My emotions overtook me so totally that I was crying harder than I ever had in my life while making no sound out at all.

She was still standing in front of me and I reached out and lifted her shirt up slightly. I unbuttoned her pants and pulled them and her underwear down below her hips. When the impossibly soft and beautiful expanse of her pelvis was exposed to me, I buried my head there. My hands gripped her thighs and my forehead rested against her and I sobbed silently and watched my tears fall against her silky ivory of her skin.

Her hands were on my head, soothing me. She was crying, too.

I stood quickly when I heard her sob and wrapped her in my arms. I kissed her and she kissed me back, and we laughed. Joyful laughter with tears in our eyes.

I stripped her of her clothing, slowly, and she met my eyes as my hands touched her pelvis, holding the precious cargo that lay beneath layers of skin and muscle. I laid her on the bed and went to the bathroom to get our pajamas off the hook, so they were within reach to change into before we fell asleep. Then I stripped my clothes off.

I kissed her body and skimmed my hands over her skin. She was talking, telling me what Dr. Craig had said, about avoiding anything that irritated her cervix, about how seeing a viable heartbeat was a good sign – the best sign that this baby would make it. I only half heard her. I wasn't interested in sex; I was interested in getting acquainted with the baby inside her that I knew without a doubt would make it. I rested my cheek on her left hip and trailed my fingers over the scar on her abdomen, a reminder of the time I nearly lost her for good, and then I settled my hand on her pelvis again.

"I know you can't hear me yet," I whispered into Emily's skin. "But I'm your daddy. We're going to love you so much."

I heard Emily's sob again, and felt her hands on my head again. "I love you," she whispered. "The due date is September twenty-eighth," she whispered.

That caused me to pop my head up and move in the bed so I could face her. "Emily," I whispered back, at a loss for words.

"I know," she said, shaking her head slightly in disbelief.

I pulled her towards me, so there was no space between us, and felt her arms surround me and her lips against mine. "I'm pregnant," she said. And then I felt her smile against my skin, and I returned that smile, probably the most genuine smile I'd ever felt on my face.

I must have fallen asleep like that, with Emily naked in my arms, because the next thing I was aware of was her shaking me awake and handing me my flannel pajama bottoms.

I drifted off again quickly, and it was such a deep and content sleep that I didn't even hear Leon's motion sensor alarm go off. It must have though.

The light is filtering in our bedroom window when I wake up this morning, and I don't immediately remember why I feel the way I do, like a kid on Christmas morning; the tingling of nervous excitement radiates inside me. I blink my eyes open fully and remember. _Emily's pregnant._ I say in my head. _Emily's pregnant. Emily's pregnant._ I chant it and a smile breaks over my face.

Emily is beside me, laying on her side, and I raise my head and find Leon in his usual position – on his side facing Emily, legs curled up in front of him, and one of his little hands in one of hers.

They're both sleeping peacefully still and I sit up in bed so I can watch them. My family – a woman I love in such a way I couldn't even begin to try and put it into words, a little boy whose heart is healing with us just like our hearts had healed together since August, and in several months, a baby.

I reach my arm over Emily's waist, resting my hand on her pelvis. She stirs slightly and her lips turn up in a smile. She places the hand not being held by Leon over mine.

 _What goes around, comes around._ The phrase pops into my head, which surprises me. It's something I'd always thought of when it came to bad guys getting theirs. But maybe the good guys get that karmic justice, too.

I lay back down, keeping my hand where it is and pressing my chest against Emily's back. I feel her squeeze my hand and push her body more firmly against mine.

She is my holy water. She is the person I know who will always save me when I need saving; and she trusts me enough to let me do the same for her. She is my absolution and my faith and whom I wanted to bow down and pray to.

With every detail she finally knows and with no secrets left in my heart, the woman who had always held herself back from permanent connections had looked me in the eyes twice in the past couple of weeks – first with Leon, and again last night when she told me she was pregnant – and said, "Let's have a family. Let's be connected forever."

"Thank you," I say in a hushed tone barely above a whisper. I think she knows what I'm thanking her for; not just Leon and the baby, but everything – the peace she's given to my conflicted soul since she came home. I kiss her ear and say it again. "Thank you, Emily."


	14. Chapter 14

_March 18, 2016_

My father is frail. He's going to turn seventy-five years old at the end of May, and decades of heavy drinking have taken their toll on his body. Though he's stuck with his sobriety since Christmas, and welcomes my visits and phone calls, there's no reversing the damage - both physical and habitual.

He shuffles when he walks. He looks like every drunk person I've ever seen or been, trying to make his way from point A to point B, like the ground under him isn't stable. As evening approaches and he gets tired, he starts slurring his words slightly, like his mind remembers the alcohol that is no longer coursing through his veins. His hands still shake a lot.

I've spoken with him on the phone once a week since Christmas, and Derek and I have visited him in Delaware three times. He's open to my questions, but his body language is easy to read. One word answers to anything means, "Don't ask me anymore."

I asked him how much he was really drinking, and he told me it increased over time. At first it was just at nights to get to sleep, and then it became an all-day thing, but not always. When he was out on the water, he was careful.

I asked him how he initially got from Italy to the US, and he described in detail how he'd gotten a job on a cargo ship to make the journey.

When I asked him what he did when he wasn't drinking or passed out or fishing, he shrugged his shoulders. "Wrote."

One word, end of conversation.

He never mentions my mother, and when I have - twice - he doesn't even give me a one word response. His lips close into a thin line and he says nothing at all.

I made the trek to Delaware early on the Sunday morning after Derek and I found out I was pregnant; I didn't go to tell him about the baby, I went to tell him about Leon.

Derek and I agreed not to tell anyone I was pregnant just yet. Neither of us were naive; no matter how much we hoped and believed that I'd carry this pregnancy to term, at my age, the odds of miscarriage were much higher, even after seeing a heartbeat. We agreed to get through the first trimester and the first round of prenatal tests.

I might have been more open to people knowing right away if I actually felt pregnant. I wanted to be throwing up and feeling incredibly nauseous. I wanted my breasts to ache and the thought of touching them to make me cringe. I'd experienced both when I was fifteen, and this time I had none of that. Not really.

I had the modest nausea that I'd attributed to feeling anxious or nervous about Leon for the past couple of weeks. I was only just slightly more tired than usual. It concerned me. I wanted to feel more; I wanted to feel everything. I wanted every classic pregnancy symptom expanded exponentially at the prescribed time to make this feel real.

When we woke up that first Saturday morning after we knew, with Leon still passed out next to me in the bed, I looked at Derek's face and he looked like he'd regressed about ten years, age-wise. It's not that I'd never seen him relaxed before or happy; in the past several months, relaxed and happy had been pretty much a mainstay for us. But he looked different, and I couldn't pinpoint the emotion I saw on his face.

When Leon woke up, he smiled at us both. Then he heard slight sounds that filtered their way up from the kitchen one floor below and smiled even wider. "Nana," he said. He bolted from our bed and I could hear his feet on the stairs.

He called us Emily and Derek, but was immediately fine with a title for Fran. It was understandable. He'd had a mother, and he may not have had a father, but he had some contextual basis for them, namely in the form of his mother's sketchy boyfriends. He hadn't told us much about himself or his life before he was kidnapped, but we'd gotten that much out of him.

Fran was a grandmother from storybooks and cartoons and movies and Leon bonded with her instantly. She came to us on the wings of a one-way plane ticket, and said she'd stay until we got sick of her or she got tired of us, which we all knew was not likely to happen. Derek told me when Fran first arrived at the airport that she'd introduced herself as Derek's mom, which Leon knew, because I'd explained that to him in detail before I left for work that morning. He may not have been able to speak too much English yet, but he could understand quite a bit. Fran told Leon he could call her Fran or Nana, and she'd been Nana ever since.

I listened from our bed that morning as Leon's feet landed on the first floor of the house and he happily greeted Fran in the kitchen. Derek pulled me to him and kissed my forehead. That was when we discussed telling people about the baby, and we decided to wait.

"I didn't get to tell you about yesterday in Williamsburg," he whispered to me before I got out of bed.

"What happened?" I asked.

"He really liked being around the other kids who were in the garden there," Derek told me. He told me the whole story about the day, how Leon was kind and curious about being in such close proximity to other children. And we decided it was time to start extending Leon's social circles. Our initial thought was JJ and her family; JJ because she's practically impossible to feel uncomfortable around, and Henry because he was nearly two years younger than Leon, but kind and mature for his age. We both acknowledged that Penelope needed to be included, because she'd been showing astounding restraint staying away since we brought Leon home, and we couldn't not invite her to this first gathering.

That was how we ended up with JJ, Will, Henry, baby Zachary and Penelope over at our house that Saturday afternoon. Leon was shy at first around everyone. He glued himself to my side and stared, his blue eyes blinking slowly at all of the newcomers in the living room.

Henry lifted up a large box - a lego set. "I brought Legos," he said quietly while glancing between Leon and JJ, like he wasn't quite sure what to do. But JJ and Will must have prepared him well, because he looked at me and said, "Emily, can you please tell him I brought legos and ask him if he wants to play with me?"

So I squeezed Leon's hand and translated. Slowly, Leon nodded. He stepped towards Henry, and smiled. Henry returned the grin that looked so much like JJ's it made me wonder what our baby's smile would be like, mine or Derek's.

Things settled comfortably after that. Derek and Will got on the floor with the boys and the legos. JJ, Penelope and I sat around the kitchen table with Fran, who lovingly held Zachary, drinking tea. I watched Leon, who probably had never had many toys, and probably had had even fewer friendships. He was a natural at it though, being a friendly little boy when he felt safe and secure. And he was surprisingly good with Legos, once he got the instruction manual in his hands. Though the language barrier was significant, the non-verbal communication was sweet and age-appropriate.

We all had pizza together for dinner that evening, and Leon's comfort level increased with everyone. It didn't escape me, as my slice of pizza was before me, that I picked off the sausage. The smell and thought of eating it made my stomach roll, and I knew it had nothing to do with nerves or anxiety about Leon anymore. Sausage was typically my pizza go-to topping, and I watched JJ raise one eyebrow slightly as I picked it off. I smiled at her and shrugged, and she said nothing, because she was JJ and she wouldn't. But I also watched her grin slightly as she took her first bite of pizza.

It was after that, while all of the adults were sitting around and talking, that Leon was walking with Henry around the living room. He stopped at the fireplace mantle and pointed to the ship in the bottle. "Little Moon," Leon said. "My grandfather made." He grinned at Henry, and my heart did a stutter step.

Later that night, when Derek and I were putting him to bed, Leon asked me quietly in French if Fran knew what happened to Derek when he was a younger. I told him she did. He blushed and asked if Fran knew about what had happened to him, and I hugged him and told him she did. He went through the list. "Does JJ and Will? Does Penelope?" Yes, I told him. "Does Henry?" No, I assured him.

He was quiet for several minutes after that. He laid back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, his eyes blinking rapidly. Then he told me as best as he could at his age that his foster parents in Paris were nice, but they wanted to pretend like it never happened, which made him feel like he couldn't talk about it, or anything relating to it, like how the kids at school made fun of him and hit him.

I assured him that he could talk to us about anything. I assured him that he was safe with us and could feel however he wanted to feel and we would understand. I told him that pretending bad things didn't happen didn't make them go away; I told him accepting those bad things and working through them allowed us to let go, even if we could never totally forget. I said it in English and French, so Derek could understand.

He sat next to Leon on the bed and put his hand over the little boy's. Leon asked Derek how often he thought about what happened to him. More specifically, he asked if there were days when he didn't think about it all. I translated. Derek assured him that yes, that will happen, but it takes time.

"How long?" Leon asked.

Derek spoke and I translated again. "I don't know for sure. I never told anybody about what happened to me for many, many years. I never talked to anybody about it. I think because of that, I thought about what happened quite a bit. Once people I cared about knew, and I stopped being embarrassed about that, it started getting easier to not think about it. And then one day I realized I hadn't thought about in a week and it surprised me. And then it was a month. Sometimes things come up and I still think about it, but it doesn't hurt as much when that happens anymore. It's better now, much better, because I told my whole story."

Leon stared at Derek for a long time before crawling into his lap and wrapping his little arms around Derek's neck. "What was his name?" Leon asked in French, but Derek didn't need a translation for that.

I watched him swallow with great difficulty and his eyes landed on me. He hugged Leon to his chest and said, "Carl."

"Did it hurt?" Leon asked with his head buried on Derek's shoulder.

Derek raised his eyebrow at me and I converted the question to English, speaking past the lump in my throat.

"Yes," Derek said softly.

Leon looked up from Derek's shoulder and asked me, "JJ and Will don't think I'd hurt Henry do they?"

I sat down and put my arms around him and Derek. "No, Leon. They know bad things can happen to people. Terrible things. But they also know that doesn't mean you'd hurt someone the same way. They know because Derek would never hurt anyone. And they know because they've met many children and adults in their jobs who had bad things happen to them, and they never hurt anyone else. I think they very much want you and Henry to be friends. When they see you, they see a kind boy and a good person."

The whole conversation wiped us all out emotionally. Leon was quiet after that, as we tucked him in for the night. He hugged us both and he kissed my cheek. We left his room and I made it the few steps across the hallway to our room. I collapsed into bed, my arms around Derek, pulling him with me, holding him to me and keeping my ear against the beating of his heart. It all just felt so raw and precarious - Leon and helping him grow up emotionally strong and healthy despite his past, me being pregnant, being there with Derek at all like this, raising a family.

I think Derek was feeling similarly, because we got up from the bed and quietly got ourselves ready for sleep. Back into pajamas, we fell into bed together again and resumed the same position. I fell asleep with my head on Derek's chest, his fingers running through my hair, both of us in deep thought.

And we woke up in the same position early the next morning, with no little boy in bed next to me. Leon had made it the whole night in his bed. It made me think about the power of taking risks and telling truths, even when those truths and the reactions that might come were unpredictable or worrisome.

I opened my mouth to tell Derek I loved him, and what came out was, "I need to go tell my father about Leon."

That Sunday morning drive was cloudy with intermittent sprinkles, but it was clear by the time I got to Delaware. I found my father on his boat, barefoot and in jeans and a t-shirt. The whole scene looked a lot different than it did back in November, when both my father and his boat were relatively unkempt and dirty.

Plus, he smiled hugely when he saw me and stepped onto the dock to give me a hug. "I wasn't expecting you," he said quietly in my ear. Gone was the smell of unwashed hair and alcohol. In its place was the clean smell of Irish Spring soap and something else that was a scent I associated with my father from when I was a young girl.

"I know. I needed to talk to you," I responded.

He invited me onto his boat and we sat across from each other. I was nervous, but I launched right in. "The case in August? The one you had the newspaper clippings from?" I asked. He nodded and I continued, "There was a little boy I met during that time, one of the victims. He's had a bad time of it and he tried to kill himself a few weeks ago. When I got the call, Derek and I flew to Paris. We brought him back home with us. His name's Leon and he's eight years old. He's a wonderful little boy and I'm so happy we have him."

My father's eyes met mine and he didn't look away. I wouldn't say his mouth moved into a thin line, which was an indicator that he didn't want to talk about it or it was too much for him. After a few seconds he smiled slightly at me. "It's good he's with you and Derek. You'll be good for him," he said softly, carefully.

I nodded. "Leon's curious about you. He's seen pictures of you and he's fascinated by the ship in the bottle on the mantel."

My father reached over and touched my knee. "Emily, I don't know," he said sadly. "I love you, but I don't know. I'm going to have to think about it. I think you're probably an amazing mother, and I think I'd like to see that, but I've avoided children since the day I left you. I know things are better now, for you and me, but every day is still a struggle for me. I'm staying sober because I want a relationship with you, but I don't know if I can handle being around a child without it making me think of everything I ran away from."

It was heartbreaking and beautiful in its honesty, actually better than what I imagined. He wasn't giving me a one word response or shutting himself off. He was saying he didn't know, but he also wasn't saying, "No."

"You can take your time," I said to him. "I just wanted you to know. I didn't tell you at first because I was worried about how you'd react. But it felt wrong keeping it from you. If you do decide to come, Fran's here right now. She'll probably be here for awhile. She's a good buffer."

My dad laughed at that. "That she is."

Silence descended over us and I looked around. I looked at my watch and back at my father. "It looks like you're getting ready to go fishing. I have a couple of hours. Want company?"

My dad stood and reached his hand out to me. I took it, and he pulled me to my feet. "Fishing is always better with my first mate."

That was nearly two weeks ago.

My father and I fished that day and had a pleasant, but quiet, time. Derek and I went back to Dr. Craig's office the next day and we both got to see our baby on that grainy screen, our fingers linked together and tears in our eyes as we both watched the tangible proof of a beating heart. Leon started going to therapy, and seemed to be genuinely positive about having a private outlet for his thoughts. He's seen Henry several times since that first meeting, and even spent a few hours at JJ's house without us. He's met the rest of the team, including Jack.

And through it all, Derek's still had that look on his face, the one that makes him look so much younger, but is an emotion I can't pinpoint.

This morning, I'm standing in the bathroom running my fingers through my hair, putting on the finishing touches as I get ready for work. He's standing behind me, having just stepped out of the shower. I catch his reflection in the mirror and search his face, trying to figure out exactly what this emotion is that I'm seeing.

He grins at me in the mirror. "What?" he asks.

I turn to look at him. "You've just looked different since you found out I was pregnant. Actually, you started looking like that when we brought Leon home, but it's even more evident now. I'm trying to figure out what it is I see on your face. I've never not been able to read you."

"You look different, too," he responds, still smiling.

I raise an eyebrow and turn back towards the mirror. Do I look different? I can't really see it. I'm due for a blood test tomorrow, a prenatal screening that will tell us whether this baby is healthy or not, and I'm still waiting for that big green light on the horizon, the one that says I made it through the first trimester. I still don't feel very pregnant, and that worries me. But I am happy. Happy with Derek and Leon. Happy to have our friends in our life and Fran here.

Maybe I do look slightly different, a touch of radiance. But it doesn't quite match what I'm seeing on Derek's face. I watch him step up behind me. I watch one hand settle low, over my stomach, and one arm wrap around my chest. "I think it's called contentment," he whispers in my ear.

I smile at the word. I smile because I'm the one who put that look on his face in a lot of ways. I smile because he's here with me and content, which is something I know he hasn't truly experienced since was a young child.

But I mull the word over in my mind this morning work, and I can't really find that descriptive adjective inside me. I envy Derek in a lot of ways, for his ability to be confident in my pregnancy and our future as a family of four. I envy him that he left one path in life and jumped into another, staying home with Leon for the time being, and found a missing piece inside him that he needed to find - the piece that needed to father a little boy who had a tragic past similar to his.

It's not that I haven't found my fair share of missing pieces inside me since I came home from London. I've found enough that I should just be eternally grateful and let everything else go. But I'm not quite there yet. I'm still holding out for a blood test, and a twelve-week ultrasound, and my father. My father who called me eleven days ago and told me he was going to set out to sea for awhile. He didn't take off without telling me, just like he promised. It was something, I tell myself. But it wasn't enough.

I mull over the word _content_ before my morning meeting, and I'm still thinking about it at eleven o'clock when that meeting is finished. My phone rings just as I'm settling myself back at my desk. It's Derek.

"Hey," I answer softly, smiling to myself in my office. If he's calling me at work, it's usually because Leon did something funny or wonderful, and I brace myself for the happy story.

"Can you come home for lunch?" he asks in a hushed whisper.

"What's wrong?" I ask worriedly.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing." I can hear the smile in his voice. "Your father's here."

I don't quite believe it. I don't believe it as I make my way out of my office, nor do I totally believe on the short drive home. But when I pull up at the house and open the front door, the truth of it is right there in front of me, in bright three dimensions.

My father is sitting on the couch, and Leon is on the floor, at his feet. His little body is leaning over the coffee table, at a glass bottle and all of the supplies needed to craft a simple ship to fit inside.

Leon looks over at me and his smile lights up the room. "Grandpa's here!" he exclaims in English.

My father turns and finds my eyes. He smiles at me, looking shy but happy. Looking nervous, but content. _Content_ , there's that word again.

"I was just telling Leon here that I'm old and my hands shake too much for the strings and hinges now, but I think he can handle it, and he's doing a fine job."

I take in the bag on the floor near the couch, and I know this isn't a project that just gets complete in a single day. He's planning to see it through, I think.

Fran smiles at me from across the room and brushes a tear from her face. She doesn't ask too much about my life, but it's like she knows everything without me having to say a word. She knows what this means to me. And Derek is there, his arm around me.

My father sailed away to think things over because the idea of a grandchild or being around any child was difficult for him. But he came back, whole and sober. This time, he came back. And I feel it then, even though I don't quite have all the pieces yet. Contentment.


	15. Chapter 15

_April 9, 2016_

The two-story, four-bedroom house in Alexandria was built in the early 1900s, but had been completely renovated. The current garage still has the feel of being a carriage house. The current owners had built an apartment over the garage – a pleasant, sunny space with air conditioning, a small bedroom and bathroom, and a cozy living room and kitchen.

The log cabin that sits farther back on the lot has also been renovated; it was actually the original house on this property, built in the mid 1800s. With the fireplace and two bedrooms, one a loft bedroom, and the kitchen that boasted a refurbished, turn-of-the century stove that had been retrofitted to make it more modern, walking into that space was a lot like walking into a scene from Little House on the Prairie. The front door opened up right to a path that led to a pier on the Potomac.

The main house was just right. That's what I thought when I first stepped inside the door – this house is _just right._ It wasn't ridiculously big; it wasn't too pristine. It was comfortable and bright, surrounded by old trees, and with river views from all the windows in the back of the house.

It was the third water-front home we'd looked at. The first was okay, but it sat on over ten acres and we wanted neighbors closer, people who had kids that Leon and, eventually, the baby could play with. The second house was part of a gated, river-front housing development and it screamed pretentious. I was also pretty sure I was the only black man within miles of the place.

But this house, the one I'm standing in now, sits on two acres and is part of an older street with homes on similar-sized, long, narrow lots. The houses sit nearer the street and the property stretches back towards the water, so you get the feeling of being in a neighborhood along with the feeling of privacy. The first time Emily and I came here, there was a moderately diverse group of kids outside riding bikes when we first arrived, a whole gaggle of them enjoying the warmer weather during their spring break, laughing and racing down the street filled with cherry trees that were in full bloom.

It felt like a home right away.

A home in a price range I'd never consider for myself, unless I were to win the lottery. I'm not even sure Rossi would consider this price range. The realtor tells us it's a steal at just under three million dollars.

It's not a home in a price range Emily would have considered either. She'd been great about saving through the years, and, with the sale of my home that went through three weeks ago, we were on pretty even footing when it came to assets if she were to sell her flat in London. She's not planning to do that and uproot the family who's renting from her, because we don't need to her to.

Were it not for Clyde Easter, we wouldn't be standing in this house at all. The man wasn't overtly wealthy when it came to liquid assets; he had enough to help buy me back after I was kidnapped, but not much beyond that. What he did have, and what he had sold a couple of months before he died, was an expansive, luxury flat on one of the most desired streets in London. It had been in his family for a long time, he'd inherited it when his parents died, and he'd sold it for about eight million American dollars. He left it all to Emily.

Which is what brought us to this house on a sunny Saturday in April. It was our second visit to the house. I'd left Leon with my mom and snuck off to see the place with Emily during her lunch the Wednesday before. We walked around the property, our eyes meeting frequently, and there was really no discussion necessary. We put in a cash offer and it was accepted.

We're back here today with my mother and Leon, showing them the property – showing them our new home. Henry spent the night the night before, and he and Leon are off running around the backyard, and my mother is currently taking in the surroundings of the apartment above the garage.

"This way, you can stay whenever you want, however long you want, but you can have your own space," Emily is saying softly.

My mother glances between her and me, and I know the look in her eye. She thinks it's too much, and she's shy about accepting.

Money has always been a sticky subject in the Morgan family, since the day my father died. It wasn't like we had a plethora of extra when he was alive, but we weren't lacking for anything. After I got out on my own and started earning money, I was a staunch saver. And even when I loosened my wallet a little, once I'd moved to DC, it was to buy properties and sell them for a profit.

I never discussed my finances with anyone until Savannah, and that wasn't really smooth sailing once I did. I'd offered her up the keys to a house for both of us to live in on a spur of the moment decision, and then dragged my heels about refinancing so both of our names could be on the deed. It wasn't that I didn't trust her; it was just that I didn't want to intermingle my finances with someone else. I held my money close to the vest because I'd lived for five years essentially selling my body to Carl Buford for things my family needed. Letting go or mixing money or sharing it with anyone caused me intense anxiety, even decades later.

It was entirely different with Emily.

Back when I first started living with her, she told me about the massive quantity of money Clyde had left her. She told me she could have filed forms with Interpol to get the money back that he'd spent during the case, but she hadn't; she left that money in the pool to be distributed to the victims.

She told me she'd like to take half of what was left and set up some sort of scholarship fund for victims of sexual crimes.

"And the other half?" I'd asked her back in November.

She'd smiled at me. "I'm not sure. I'd like to stay on the water, though."

We hadn't spent heavy hours in discussion about it back then. But at the end of November, when she demanded her mother transfer her father's money to her so she could start taking care of him, I was slightly surprised. It wasn't like she needed the money to take care of her father, but I understood when she said it was more symbolic than anything else. And after that she quietly brought home the paperwork necessary to put my name on all of her astronomically large investment accounts. I understood that move was symbolic, too.

I didn't have a lot to add to the pot back then, before my house sold, but the idea of throwing our money together much like we were throwing ourselves together caused me absolutely zero anxiety. I could say that was because I was suddenly the beneficiary of more money than I'd ever imagined, but I know that's not it. I know that had Clyde left Emily nothing, it still would not have been a problem for me.

We started doing our bills together in January, and we made the necessary payments from a joint account – my mortgage, the rent on the place in Georgetown and all the other things.

It made that piece of making the decision to bring Leon home with us and me taking a leave of absence from work that much easier. Whatever hang ups I might have had in my past about money, Emily had none of them. _What's mine is yours,_ she told me back in January, _My heart, my love, and everything else._

Little did either of us know she was already pregnant when she'd spoken those words.

It's been about eight weeks since I first met Leon in that hospital in Paris, and most days I can't recall what life was like before he came home with us. He's innately sweet and kind and has a love of life like nothing I've ever seen before. The first two nights after one of his therapy sessions are not easy for him and he usually ends up in bed next to Emily, his hand clutching hers. But he's surrounded by loving, stable adults; it's not unusual for one or two members of the team to stop by in the evenings when they're in town. And when they travel, it's not unusual for Will to be at our house for dinner with the baby and Henry.

Leon sometimes makes me wonder how much different my life might have been if I'd just told my mother what was happening to me right away back when I was twelve. I quickly shake that thought from my mind whenever it comes, though. That telling someone would have altered my life in major ways is a given; that it would have altered it in a way where I didn't have Emily and Leon and a baby on the way is something I can't even imagine. I've accepted my lot in the life, and I'm truly at peace in my heart for the first time since I was about Leon's age. I enjoy watching him soak up the love and steadiness given to him from people who know his story; it's in our arms and the arms of our friends and family that he's learning to love himself again.

He's also bright, quick and eager to learn. His mastery of the English language is exploding, especially in the past couple of weeks, and I've started a homeschooling curriculum with him so that he's ready for third grade in the fall, and he's blowing through the material.

Emily and I applied for him to go to a French Immersion school just outside of DC in the fall, but we also don't want to completely let go of the idea of a neighborhood school, with neighborhood friends and families who know us. The day we applied for him to go to that school was the first time Emily mentioned the idea of moving away from Georgetown.

The end of March and beginning of April have been magical for both of us in more ways than we can count. Her father stayed with us for four days back in March, and I watched Emily's eyes fill with tears every time he laughed with Leon, and they laughed together a lot.

When he said he needed to head out and back to Delaware to get his boat because the family would be coming back to the house soon, Emily implored him to not just sail his way up and down the east coast for the summer. "I want you to have a port where I can find you," she whispered to him the last night he was with us, after Leon and my mother had gone to bed.

She glanced at me and held my gaze for a few seconds, asking if it would be okay to tell him now when we'd agreed to wait on it, and I nodded at her. "Daddy," she breathed. "I'm pregnant. I want you around."

I thought my reaction to Emily's pregnancy was poetic and beautiful, but it was nothing compared her father's. We were a household of slightly broken people - me and Emily, Leon, my mom and Emily's father – who were learning or had learned how to put ourselves back together. But Christopher Prentiss might have been the worst off of all of us: we'd all gotten on with our lives and kept moving forward, and he'd spent thirty years in an alcohol-induced purgatory.

He sobbed when Emily told him, harsh, wracking noises coming from deep within him. She moved to sit next to him on the couch and wrapped her arms around him. "The baby is due September twenty-eight."

He cried impossibly harder, his shoulders shaking to the point that I thought he might physically hurt himself, and he hugged his daughter. He hugged her and cried and finally calmed enough to say, "I never thought I'd get a chance with you. Maybe I'll be around long enough to get it right this time, with my grandchildren."

And I watched Emily pull back from him. She wiped the tears on her own cheeks before wiping his away from his wrinkled, sun-soaked skin. "You're already getting it right, Daddy."

I stood and left the room at that moment, letting them have their time. When Emily came up to the bedroom about thirty minutes later, her eyes were puffy and red, but her smile was genuine. "He says he's open to getting a slip in Annapolis, so he's only an hour bus ride away from here. He says he'll visit it often."

And he had. On Saturday or Sunday, Christopher Prentiss would show up at our door, and he would join us in whatever we had planned for that day. Leon adored him, and Emily adored him, and my mom adored him. And I just wanted to get on my knees and thank him for sticking with his sobriety, for sticking with his daughter, because I think Emily and I would have been okay without him getting sober, but I don't think we would have quite looked like _this_.

After years of feeling like I was striving for an elusive _that,_ I found myself living with a beautiful _this_ , an unbelievable _now._ And what _now_ looked like was a little boy who loved us and was finding peace in his own heart. _Now_ was Leon inexplicably deciding to call us Mama and Papa; he had a mountain of books in both French and English in his room and I can only imagine the titles for us came from one of those stories.

The words came out of the blue one day at the beginning of April. Emily was at work, my mother was out grocery shopping, and I was sitting with Leon at the kitchen table, doing math with him. I watched the pencil scratch on the paper, and then he turned it towards me. "Like this, Papa?" he asked.

I immediately clenched my teeth to try and stop the flow of tears. "Exactly like that," I said, my voice only cracking slightly. I smiled at him and he grinned and looked back his paper. But he was eight and wasn't naïve, and he knew him calling me that meant something to me. He stared at his paper for about five seconds before sitting up in his chair, adjusting his body so he was on his knees and leaning forward to hug me. "You feel like a Papa."

He could have called me anything he wanted and I wouldn't have cared, but it was in that moment that I truly felt like a father. I hugged him for a long time and kept it together. "I like being your Papa," I finally said to him.

He pulled back and smiled. "I like being your Leon," he said. And we continued with math while my heart raced and I felt slightly faint.

That afternoon we worked on a Lego set and when Emily walked in the door after work, Leon called out, "Mama, look what me and Papa made!"

I watched the invisible sledgehammer hit Emily in the heart, the way her eyes first looked stunned, and then she straightened her body and smiled. I watched the slight shaking of her hands and the tears she was holding at bay. I watched her eyes as they glanced at me, a look that said, "Beware: I'm going to be sobbing about this later after he's in bed."

She walked towards us and sat on the floor. Leon got on her lap and pointed out the details of the Lego tree house we'd built. And I felt her touch my hand with just two soft fingers. I turned to look at her while Leon spoke. "Thank you," she mouthed at me. And I understood. I understood in that moment that it wasn't just Emily healing me; we were so deeply connected and parallel that we were making the steps that healed each other, that we weren't alone anymore and never would be again.

But it was more than just Emily and her father and Leon. _Now_ was getting a phone call a week ago that informed us that Emily's fetal-DNA test was all clear and the baby was healthy. _Now_ was how I'd lay on my side at night, with my head on a pillow that was situated near her hip, and stare at the slightest rise that used to just be a flat expanse between her hips. It was barely perceptible, but it was there.

 _Now_ was going to see Dr. Craig five days ago and seeing our baby's heartbeat and hearing it and clasping our hands together in awe as we watched little arms and legs move. _Now_ was making it through that first trimester with nothing but positive news.

 _Now_ was seeing two houses on Tuesday during Emily's lunch that weren't quite right, and finding this house this past Wednesday.

 _Now_ I'm standing in the warm apartment above the garage of our new home and staring at my mother, who doesn't quite know what to think.

I take her hand in mine and smile at her before grinning at Emily. "Let us show you the main house," I say.

My mother follows me down the stairs and towards the front door of the main house, Emily walking beside her. We walk her through kitchen and dining room and living room and family room and den. We head up the stairs and we show her the master bedroom, the room that will be our exercise room, and the room that will be Leon's.

Then we walk her a few feet down the hall to another bedroom and I look over at Emily, smiling. "And this," I say softly to my amazing mother, "will be the baby's room."

Her eyes don't register my statement right away, then they open in shock. She glances at me, and then at Emily and then at Emily's stomach. Her eyes fill with tears and she reaches out towards Emily, wrapping her in a hug, and reaching an arm out for me, to pull me along.

She cries and laughs and holds onto us. I have my arms around both Emily and my mom, and my eyes look out the window and into the backyard. I can see the trees and the green grass, the little log cabin and the glistening water. And I can see Leon and Henry at a large tree on the side of the property, trying to help each other climb.

 _Just right_ , I think.


	16. Chapter 16

_May 16, 2016_

Letting people in has been a long-held aversion of mine. You let people in, and you have to accept the fact that you might break when you lose them. I know what that kind of loss feels like in my heart; I learned it when I was fourteen years old when my father left, and, aside from a few months when I'd completely absorbed and became Lauren Reynolds, I had been unwilling to let anyone penetrate the sentry surrounding my heart for thirty years since then.

Though I'm relatively calm now that Derek's home with Leon, watching him head off into danger with the BAU had been excruciatingly difficult for me for several months. I would never tell him I didn't want him to go back to his job; I wouldn't request it and I wouldn't broach a conversation about it. It's his life and his passion and his choice, and I wouldn't take that away from him with my own insecurities. But with each English word Leon learns, and with every day he grows with us and finds comfort and love, with Fran here and willing to take care of him, I've started holding my breath and waiting for the moment Derek tells me he's heading back to the FBI.

And then there's Leon. Each moment that little boy is out of my sight and he's not with Derek, it's like a knife in my heart. It's like that even when he's someplace as safe as JJ's house. It's like that when Penelope takes him for a few hours on a weekend day. And it was like that yesterday, when my father and Andrew took him sailing, while we were moving into our new home.

My fear of loss is the reason I'm still going to therapy. It's the reason I sit in my therapist's office and cry and try to talk my way through learning the fine art of balancing holding on and letting go.

In many ways I was learning more about that skill from Leon than I was from anyone. With the innocence of a child still in his heart, despite his circumstances, and his unfettered desire to want to embrace his new life, he showed me the combination of letting go and holding on on a daily basis. He'd go to therapy, and then he'd come home. He'd talk about what was difficult for him and spend one or, more likely, two nights coming into our room and sleeping next to me while clutching my hand. And then he'd let it go. He'd let it go and move onto the next thing and blossom before our eyes.

The day after we showed Fran our new home, we set out with Leon to buy him a bike and teach him to ride. The kids in our new neighborhood seemed like bicycles were an extension of their limbs, and we didn't want Leon left out because he couldn't ride one.

Leon was the same at the bike shop as he had been every time we'd taking him shopping since he came home with us - he was uncomfortable with us buying him things, and he searched out the least expensive options. We knew a lot more about him now, and we knew that he'd been the primary shopper for him and his mom, whenever his mom had money. He was the one who went out on the streets and begged for money when she didn't have any. He was the one who would make a few dollars stretch to feed them both. He was the one who got himself up in the mornings and went to school, whose brilliant mind learned despite the reason for him being there - he was there to forage for discarded food. He was the one who went to churches to find them both clothes from huge donation piles. It was on one such trip that he was snatched off the street and then delivered to Adrian Stancu to be raped and abused.

He'd spent a few months with a foster family who tried to care for him, but he was so depressed and broken by what had happened to him and his daily encounters with his peers that he barely ate even when there was finally plenty of food. Stripped of those issues when he came home with us, and eating regular meals, he was growing at an astronomical rate. When we first took him shopping for new clothes at the end of March, we watched him. We watched as he turned over price tags and only chose the least expensive garments. We watched as his cheeks blushed while we were at the register and the money added up. I put my arm around his shoulders and squeezed him and assured him it was okay, but he struggled.

He wasn't much different at the bike shop a few blocks away from the house in Georgetown a couple weeks later. He went to the bikes in his size and the first thing he did was start looking at the price tags. Then he turned and smiled at us while placing his hands on the cheapest bike available. We didn't make a big deal about it. The truth was that at the rate he was growing, he'd need a new bike before next spring anyway, so a bike that could last a good long while wasn't necessary.

We bought the bike and walked it home to the green space in front of the rowhouse. We started on grass and let Leon get the feel of the bike underneath him. He'd fall, but he'd laugh. Then Derek took him to a slight hill and encouraged him to just get the feel of balancing, by keeping his feet off the pedals and instead close to the ground, and trying to coast down the hill without falling.

It didn't take him long after that. One trip down the hill where he put his feet down on the ground frequently. A second trip where he only put his feet down twice. And a third trip where he coasted the whole way. He was riding a little over an hour after we bought him the bike, a smile on his face and his joyful voice. "I'm doing it!" he cried out when he first started pedaling.

Derek was standing on the path near Leon, but I was sitting on a bench next to Fran, and we were both trying not to cry, and then laughing at each other for our failed efforts.

We let Leon ride for awhile on the path along the Potomac. I watched him dutifully stop and turn his bike around when he got to one of the boundaries we set for him. With his cheeks pink from the cool spring day, and his body tired from exertion on long-unused muscles, he finally stopped riding and came to a stop by the bench we were sitting upon. Fran had gone back into the house to start dinner, and Derek and I sat closely together on the bench.

"Come have a seat, Leon," Derek said, scooting away from me to make a space between us.

Leon, all smiles, took off his bike helmet and sat down, leaning his head against my arm. Derek handed him a bottle of water and we let him drink thirstily for a few seconds.

I still spoke to him in French frequently, when it was just the two of us, or when we read together at night. But I'd stopped translating everything when there were other people around. I'd told Leon to stop and ask if there was something he didn't understand, and he was fine with that arrangement. He'd accepted the idea of moving easily, but I wasn't sure how he was going to accept the idea of a baby.

I put my arm around his shoulders and squeezed him to me. I kissed the slightly sweaty, matted curls on the top of his head. "We love you," I said. "You make us smile and laugh. We're happy every day since you've been with us."

He looked up at me and grinned. "I'm happy, too."

"Your Papa and I wanted to talk to you. We have some news," I said. I purposely didn't say exciting news or good news or happy news; we'd told him he could feel however he wanted to with us and he might have very well have found the news anything but exciting or good, at least at first.

He glanced at Derek and then back at me, his eyebrows raised. It was only a few days before that we told him news that we were moving. "In September, in just a little over five months, I'm going to have a baby, and you're going to have a little brother or sister," I said softly. I removed the latest ultrasound picture from my back pocket and handed it to him.

Leon delicately took the picture in his hands, staring at it, and then looked back at me. I couldn't tell if he was confused or shocked or scared, so I repeated everything in French, just to be sure he understood.

"What will it be?" he asked quietly, his eyes back on the picture.

"We don't know," Derek chimed in.

And we don't. Though the information is definite and available in my medical records because of the fetal DNA screening, Derek and I had decided we didn't want to know, unless it became a huge issue for Leon. We'd decided that there were very few good surprises in life, and we didn't want to deprive ourselves of one of the few out there in the world.

"But he or she is going to love you," Derek continued.

Leon glanced at my lap, seeming to understand that the picture in his hands was taken from inside me, and looking for evidence that wasn't visibly there yet, aside from the fact that my favorite jeans were just a little more snug when I buttoned them.

Suddenly his eyes filled with tears. "But you'll keep me?" he whispered uncertainly.

I reached out to him. He was too old and too big for this in a lot of ways, but for a little boy who never had much affection in his life, we were both trying to fill him up with what he needed while helping him grow. We didn't care about onlookers who might question us cradling an eight year old out in public; anyone who didn't know us and didn't understand could screw themselves. I put my hands under his armpits and pulled him onto my lap, and he came willingly. I held his body against mine and put my hand on his head to guide his cheek against my shoulder. "We'll never let you go," I said to him.

Derek moved towards us and put his arms around us. "Never," he reiterated. "Part of the reason we're moving is because of the way this house is shaped. There's two bedrooms on one floor and two bedrooms on another. We don't want you or the baby to be a floor away from us; we want us all together."

Leon tilted his head up from the cocoon of mine and Derek's arms to look at me, slightly confused. I repeated everything in French, and he nodded. Then he smiled slightly. "I'll be like Henry," he said.

In that moment I was eternally grateful for the little blonde-haired boy who looked and acted so much like his mother, who had no jealousy in his heart and accepted his baby brother with ease. Who loved his life and his family and was Leon's best friend, despite the age difference. "Exactly," I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat.

Leon leaned his head against me and stared at the picture, quiet but relaxed. We sat there like that for several minutes, and then Penelope's car pulled up. We'd invited her to dinner to tell her ourselves, planning to send a text with the ultrasound picture to the rest of the team, but wanting her to hear it in person.

When I told my father, I asked him not to tell Fran quite yet.

When we told Fran, we told her only my father new, but we were planning to tell Leon and the rest of the team that weekend.

We gave Leon no such warnings.

He saw Penelope emerge from her car and slid out of our arms and off my lap in an instant. "Penelope," he called out, the ultrasound picture raised in his hand.

He took off running towards her and we could hear him, over the sounds of the river behind us and the other people talking and laughing in the little park. "Mama is going to have a baby!" he cried out happily.

I understood her fierce protectiveness of Derek, and how she separated that out from how much she personally cared about me. I fully understood it the moment she signed on for the unknown and weeks of hell in order to get him back after he was kidnapped, and how she loved and supported me through all of that even though Derek Morgan was her end goal. I understood her apprehensiveness of me, and her fear that I'd take Derek so far down the path of love and then leave again. It was that apprehensiveness that was there when I first came home and she pushed me into therapy. It was an apprehensiveness that hung around, but dissipated significantly through the holidays and until Leon came home with us. After that it became a figment, a barely perceptible look I'd catch in her eyes only occasionally.

But when Leon told her I was having a baby and she looked at me fully in the face before looking at Derek, that apprehensiveness was obliterated. She cried happy tears and she laughed and she hugged us both. Then she lifted Leon in her arms so he could show her the picture in his hands.

That evening, after dinner, she was the one who snapped the picture of me and Derek and Leon on the couch, all of us smiling with the ultrasound picture in our hands and facing the camera. And she stood next to me with one hand on my back while I texted the rest of the team. "Baby Morgan coming your way in September," were my simple words attached to the picture.

Hotch responded with his congratulations first, quickly followed by Reid and Rossi. But JJ was silent, and I was mystified. I knew she was in the area over the weekend since Henry had spent the night at our house just two nights before.

Thirty minutes later there was a knock on our door, and JJ stood there with a bassinet, one that looked like it was hand-carved of wood. With tears in her eyes and a smile on her face, she laughed when I opened the door. "I knew it," she said. She pointed to the bassinet. "My father carved this for my sister before she was born, and then it was mine. Henry used it and Zachary is done with it now and in his crib. I want you to use it," she breathed out.

I gained another layer of understanding of the power of holding on and letting go in that moment. We all had our pasts, we all had our difficulties, and Penelope was correct back in October when she told me that those were the things that helped us do our jobs as well as we did. For JJ, her emotional mountain and the thing that gave her such a deep level of empathy was her sister's suicide, and yet there she was on our doorstep, with her sister's bassinet, wanting to share it with us. Letting go and holding on.

I hugged her and told her we would be honored. I started to release her and then I pulled her back to me, hugging her even harder. She was my friend, she was a woman who I trusted and I left just as much as I left Derek in a lot of ways. I was up and gone and off to London even when I'd told her there was no way I was going with a shake of my head in the briefing room nearly four years before. So I wrapped my arms around her more firmly and whispered, "I love you. Thank you for being my friend."

They were words several years overdue.

I'm not sure exactly which day it was after that, but over the next couple of weeks, I gradually started feeling pregnant. My suits, which had always been fitting, started feeling snug. Not so snug that I couldn't wear them, but snug enough that I smiled at myself as I was trying to get buttons in place while I was dressing.

I told my supervisor that I was pregnant.

I told the owner of our house in Georgetown that we'd be moving in May.

And Derek, world-class profiler with only an eight-year-old to analyze during the days while I was at work, started putting the full attention of his beautiful mind on my pelvis late in the evenings, after Leon and his mother went to bed. He mapped the day-to-day progress of my changing body in ways I couldn't even see in a mirror. He worshipped me and took care of me, rubbing my tired feet in the evenings and packing healthy lunches for me to take to work every day.

When I was fourteen weeks pregnant, there were only two things I craved: Fran Morgan's bread, and sex. The bread was easy; Fran baked it regularly, and there was always a supply in the house. Sex was not easy. Both Derek and I fretted to the point of obsession that we could potentially do something to damage my pregnancy, even though Dr. Craig assured us that there would be no problems if we were gentle and careful.

Derek was very generous with his hands and mouth, and I returned the favor, but there were many nights when I fell asleep not feeling satisfied. My sexual peak came and went when I was in my mid-thirties and was still reeling from Ian Doyle. I remembered those nights, when I was miserable and horny, alone with only my hands and the aid of a vibrator on occasion, while the lights of the Capitol Building lit up the bedroom window in my condo.

I felt very much like that for the last couple of weeks were in Georgetown, where I wasn't quite scratching the itch that was inside of me. I was happy. I was downright giddy. But I wanted Derek Morgan's body in an all-encompassing way I never had before, and I wasn't getting it. I would try to push, and he would pull away. It wasn't that I felt undesirable in any way. I felt very desired by Derek, but mutual masturbation and oral sex were not cutting it for me.

Yesterday morning, Fran got Leon up early to drive him to Annapolis. My father and Andrew were taking him on my sailboat down the Potomac and to Alexandria, to bring my boat to the dock at our new home. Sailing would take longer than an afternoon, and my father planned to use the engine for much of the time. Leon was beyond excited, and I tried to calm my nervous heart at the thought of him being away from me and Derek.

Derek and I awoke yesterday morning to a quiet a house and a bright sunny day outside the bedroom windows. Everything but our beds and larger furniture was in boxes, awaiting the movers, but they wouldn't arrive for another two hours. I rolled over onto my back, waking Derek in the process, and ran my hand over the now-perceptible bump on my stomach.

"Our final day here," I whispered to Derek. I was excited and sad about the prospect.

I'm not sure if it was the emotions about moving or if it was the fact that we were alone in the place for the first time since the middle of February. But he kissed me then, deeply, morning breath and all. Our pajamas came off, and his hands trailed over my slightly larger breasts and the visible hump on my pelvis. I leaned my head back on the pillows, preparing myself for the typical attention I'd become used to, either his hands or his mouth dipping below my pelvis, but I got neither.

I opened my eyes to find him hovering above me, supported by his arms and knees. "It's okay if we're careful, right?" he asked, loving but uncertain.

I nodded and smiled. Apparently leaving Georgetown was emotional for him, too, and he wanted a memory before he let go. And I gave him that memory. Gently and carefully so he didn't freak out, I rolled him over onto his back and straddled his hips. I kept the penetration shallow as I moved above him and I almost couldn't focus on him when for weeks that was all I wanted, him inside me. But I watched his face and kept my fingers on the skin of his cheeks and neck. I watched his hands play over my breasts and the skin on my torso. I felt his fingers grip my hips. I came with a whimper and not a scream. I shattered above him and he quickly followed me over the precipice.

It was in that way that we both said goodbye to the three stories of warmth and brightness that had ultimately and finally brought us together and connected us inextricably.

I'm not sure what I expected our first morning morning in our new home, but waking up alone in bed, with no Leon and no Derek was not it. Apparently the move yesterday tired me, because I'd slept until nearly nine o'clock.

I stretch and roll onto my back and perform my newly-typical routine. I reach my hand under the waistband of my pajama pants and greeted the baby good morning. With the amount of time that Derek and I are talking to the infant in my stomach before it can even hear, I'd be surprised if he or she didn't come out speaking several sentences in different languages.

I sit up in bed and take in my surroundings. The comfortable bed, and the boxes around the room waiting to be unpacked. Leon arrived home late yesterday afternoon with the boat and my father, and he and Andrew stayed in the little log cabin last night, a log cabin that was furnished with new things before we even moved, just waiting. Derek and I never said anything about it being a place for my father; we simply said it was our guest house and was his whenever he wanted to be there. Last night he entertained the idea of bringing his boat to Alexandria for the summer.

I hear laughter from the backyard and stand from the bed. I approach the window and see Leon in the backyard with Derek and Fran, my father and Andrew. It seems like they're surveying the largest tree in our yard. I quickly throw on a bra under my t-shirt and make my way downstairs and outside.

I walk into a discussion about full-blown plans of an epic treehouse. Leon is grinning and trots up to me to give me a hug when he sees me. Moments later, there are children on bikes in our driveway.

One little girl who looks to be about nine approaches us first with all the confidence in the world. "My mom said we should come introduce ourselves," she says. "I'm Ainsley. My mom and dad will be over in a little bit."

I shake her outstretched hand and introduce myself, and Derek does the same, followed by Leon. The rest of the kids get off their bikes. The seem to range in age from about eight to eleven. They introduce themselves and seem sweet and genuine. Ainsley smiles at Leon. "Do you want to ride bikes with us?" she asks.

 _Most people in this world are good._ They are words that have been said to me several times over the years and I try to reach out and grasp onto them now.

I see Leon eye his bike on the back porch and then his eyes land on me. He's not scared, I see that. This little boy has fought for every moment of his life until just the past couple of months, and he's not scared. But he knows I'm worried, and he's looking at me to make sure _I'm_ okay.

I want to hug him to me. I want to kiss him and keep him there and keep him safe, but I can't do that, because holding him back from living isn't living at all. I smile at him and nod and remind myself why me moved here. "Stay on our street," I say in English. "Tell me before you go into any house, and come straight home if you need me," I whisper in French.

He nods and beams at me and goes to his bike. "Have fun!" I call out as he gets on the seat.

"I will! Bye, Mama!" he shouts as he takes off with the other kids in our neighborhood.

And I let him go.


	17. Chapter 17

_June 20, 2016_

If anyone ever asked me to calculate the number of miles I'd run in my life, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I started running significant miles several times as week when I was fifteen and trying to bulk up for the football team. I knew my ticket out of my house and away from Carl Buford was a football scholarship, and I fought for that opportunity in earnest.

Back then, I'd run for ten or more miles in the evenings, and I'd run straight to a better neighborhood, away from the dinginess and roughness of the home I shared with my mother and sisters, and straight to a place that was clean and bright. I'd run in a full sprint until I arrived at my destination, and then I'd slow, jogging past the houses where I could see families illuminated by soft light sitting down for dinner.

I never looked at them and wished I could have had that. I looked at them and thought we _were_ that. We were, for the first ten years of my life. We might not have had the fancy chandelier over the dining room table, or the expensive china and flatware, but our family was happy and loving. I'd run to those homes. I'd run to a picture where I wanted to leave the sidewalk and slide in the front door and seat myself at the table and join those happy families for dinner. I'd run to get away from my reality. And then I'd run home, back to my mother who loved so deeply and so completely that she couldn't get herself back together after my father died. I instinctively knew that and forgave her everything, every one of her emotions that blinded her to my own nightmare. I'd run back to her, and she'd let me wrap her in my sweaty arms and look at me while I smiled my father's smile. "What's for dinner?" I'd ask pleasantly, like the hours I spent running were not spent fantasizing about something or someplace else.

I always wanted to recreate that scene for my mother - the truly happy family in a dining room sitting down for dinner - but my own damaged heart took a long time to get to a place where I actually could.

I have that now. I have it and Emily has it and Leon has it and Chris Prentiss has it when he wants it. And my mother has it, too. I think it's that realization that makes the runs I take on the streets of Alexandria every morning that much better, that makes them the most astonishingly rewarding miles I've ever run in my life, each and every day.

We've settled into a routine at the new house. Leon is rarely ever there in the bed next to Emily in the mornings. His growing body that exerts itself every afternoon and evening riding bikes and running around with the neighborhood kids often sleeps late. Emily has a commute now; it's not horrific, but the twenty-five minute drive is different than the mornings we spent in Georgetown before she had to leave ten or fifteen minutes before her workday started. And my mother has her own space above our garage - a space that contains all the pictures from my childhood and a lot of her furniture from Chicago, and a place for her to be that's just her own.

Weekday mornings typically look like Emily and I slowly and reluctantly peeling our bodies away from each other in our bed. She heads for the shower and I head downstairs to make breakfast and pack her lunch for the day. I've discovered many little golden nuggets of facts about Emily Prentiss in the past several months, and one of them is the fact that her iTunes library is worth several thousands of dollars. Our house has a wireless speaker system, and on mornings while I'm making omelets or french toast or waffles, I often flip on her iPod and put it on a random shuffle, listening to the music that is meaningful to her.

On the first Monday morning in our new home, Emily came downstairs dressed for work while I stood at the stove humming and singing the words to a song I can't even remember. What I remember was her sitting at the breakfast bar, placing her elbow on the travertine counter top and her chin in her hand. I heard her laughing lightly and turned to face her. "You're beautiful and amazing and you're singing all the words wrong," she said with a smile.

They say pregnant women glow, and her cheeks were glowing that morning while we had the kitchen to ourselves. I smiled at her and turned back towards the stove and purposefully belted out ridiculously ludicrous lyrics to whatever song came on, and I listened to her laugh. I remember thinking that life didn't get much better than what we had, and knowing that something even greater was on the horizon in a few months. I couldn't even imagine bumping our happiness up another notch when the baby came.

I kiss Emily every morning before she leaves for work. I kiss her with my running clothes on while I hand her her lunch. They aren't light pecks, but deep kisses of love and wonder. And then I get on my knees and pay the baby inside her equal homage, lifting her blouse and kissing her stretched skin and just waiting for the moment when I feel movement from the baby inside her under my lips. She can already feel the light flutters inside her, and has for a couple of weeks now, but there's no movement so great that it penetrates outwardly enough for me to feel.

Within moments of Emily leaving for work, my mother shows up inside the main house. She goes to the kitchen to survey what I made for breakfast and watches me with a smile on her face while I get on my running shoes. Leon often wanders downstairs around that same time, and I kiss his head and leave him in my mother's care while I take off for a run.

Of all the paths I ever ran in my life, there's none I've ever enjoyed more than the nine-mile round trip I make between our new home and Old Town Alexandria in the mornings. I think a lot on those runs. I think about my job and how to let it go in a way that doesn't make me feel guilty, because I really can't imagine going back. I think about Emily and Leon and our friends and family and a baby on the way. I think that in forty-three years of life that had its very low lows and decent enough highs, the past several months for me have been something that blow every fairy tale ever written out of the water.

There's a boutique maternity store in Old Town, and it opens right about the time I arrive there every morning. The first time I walked inside, the matronly woman who opened the store every weekday morning surveyed my sweaty body and running gear and raised her eyebrows at me. I've since come to know her - Janice - and she tells me often that she finds me utterly enchanting and adorable. "We get few husbands in here on their own," she said to me the first morning I entered the store. I don't tell her I'm not a husband, at least not yet. I play along with her perceptions because they feel real enough, and I generally pick up a blouse or shirt for Emily's growing body at least a couple of times a week. I run home with a smile on my face and a bag from that store clutched in my hands.

The first time I ran past the artisan jewelry store in Old Town, a store that boasted both hand-crafted and antique goods, I didn't even glance at the window. But on June first, which I remembered because I'd been mentally crossing out the days until the due date in my mind every morning, something in that window caught my eye.

The first morning I saw it, I glanced at it and kept on jogging to the maternity store.

The second morning I saw it, I slowed to a stop and stared into the display window for several minutes.

The third morning I saw it, I kept jogging to the maternity store. I bought Emily a new blouse and a pair of black pants. I lingered in Old Town and had a coffee. I called my mother and told her I'd be home just a little later and asked if she could start Leon on his science work. And at ten o'clock, I walked into that jewelry store. The elderly black man behind the counter reminded me half of my father and half of Gandalf the Wizard. A long, white beard grew on the dark skin of his face, and he looked too old to create the intricate work I saw in the windows of his store, but his hands were steady. They were steady and strong and warm and when I pointed to the ring on display in the window, he smiled at me. "I had a hard time with that stone. I thought it should be an emerald cut, but it always wanted to be rounded and polished, and I finally gave in."

It wasn't anywhere close to inexpensive. Orange diamonds are rare and expensive and the stone sat proudly between two traditional diamonds. I had one account that now had Emily's name on it, but we never touched it, and she never looked at it. It was my old account I used for renovations, an account I hadn't tapped into since I didn't sell my old house after I finished renovating it, and instead asked Savannah to move in with me. I pulled that debit card out of my walled that was zipped into the side pocket of my running shorts and handed it to the man.

I wasn't ready to give Emily the ring yet, thinking that the right time would present itself in some stunning fashion just like everything else we'd shared had done. But I knew in that moment, with that ring in its platinum setting in my hand, that there was no way I could ever risk the chance of someone else buying it.

I bought it. I bought it and hid it in the closet of our den, behind the urn containing Clyde Easter's ashes and the box containing Leon's mother's. I hid it under a stack of file folders of mine that sat behind those two small containers that once were living, breathing human beings, on the uppermost shelf of the closet. And I waited.

I waited past when Emily was twenty weeks pregnant at the beginning of June, halfway through her pregnancy. I waited while Leon went off to his first day of day camp at the park with the neighborhood kids. I waited until Hotch came to me two days ago while Emily was at work, with an understanding smile on his face like he knew my intentions all along, and a business card in his hand.

We sat together on the back porch on that warm June morning drinking coffee while Christopher Prentiss emerged from the log cabin behind our house and made his way to his boat to go fishing. Hotch looked me in the eyes and let me go, and I think it was what I was waiting for; not because I was a coward and couldn't or wouldn't eventually get to telling him I wasn't coming back on my own, but because I think I just needed to hear the words from his mouth. " _We'll always miss you, but we'll be okay without you. I promise you. I'll keep them safe."_

I wanted those words and his promise and I got them. I got them and clenched my jaw so I wouldn't cry. He handed me the business card, the card of an old friend of his who worked for the Department of Justice on international sex crimes. A man who was looking for a consultant with a JD, experience, and security clearance, who could be called upon as needed and work fifteen to twenty hours a week for now, with the possibility of full-time employment in the future.

When Hotch told me, I immediately considered the option. I thought about Leon and a baby in the near future, and what that job actually meant for our family and for me. I considered the millions of dollars sitting in various accounts that Emily wanted to use for scholarship funds for children of sexual crimes, and how that money was just waiting for someone to organize and run the whole thing.

Hotch wasn't emotional when he left, though those emotions were just being held under the surface. I wanted to ask him what about him, what was he waiting for before he moved onto something else, but I didn't. I knew. He was looking to save every woman who could have been Haley, and it would take a long time, maybe a lifetime, before he eradicated his guilt. So I let my face fall open to him, so he could see the understanding and respect in my face. I hugged him and thanked him. I didn't tell him we'd always be friends, because he knew that. We were a family, and he was my father figure in so many ways even though there weren't all that many years separating us. He wouldn't let me go, and I wouldn't let him go, and that sentiment needed no words.

After he left, I started planning how I'd tell Emily. I'd read it in her face frequently the past few weeks, how she didn't want me to go back to the BAU, but would never say anything out loud. I thought about candles and a late dinner after Leon went to bed and a new job and a ring in a small box hidden on a shelf in our den. But I never got to those plans.

It was only a couple of hours after Hotch left, when I'd picked Leon up from camp and we were in the backyard working on the tree house that my cell phone rang. I saw it was Emily and answered and felt dread fill my heart immediately at her gasping breaths and the tears in her voice.

"My father had a heart attack. His boat crashed into another boat and the people on the boat found him unconscious. They called the coast guard and he's at a hospital in Annapolis. I'm driving there now," she hiccuped breathlessly. "I just found him again," she cried.

I glanced at the dock on our property where Chris's boat was absent and then at Leon. "I'll meet you there."

I left Leon with my mom and the news that Grandpa was sick and had an accident and a promise of calling as soon as I knew anything. And then my car practically flew to Annapolis, breaking every traffic law on the planet.

I found Emily in the waiting room of the hospital, her eyes tear stained and red and her hand resting on her stomach. The prognosis was not good, she told me. It was bleak. He wasn't in good health to begin with, not at all, and the heart attack was severe. He was undergoing open heart surgery.

We stayed the night at the hospital, exhausted and sad and worried with our dry eyes wide open. It was the middle of the night before we were admitted to see her father in the ICU. We listened with one ear about the rules of the ICU while we eyed her unconscious father in the bed.

Emily sat beside him the rest of the night in a chair, holding his hand and talking to him about her childhood memories. She didn't sleep and I didn't sleep. I watched her and my heart broke for the beautiful woman whom I was quite convinced I loved more than it was humanly possible to love anyone. I called Leon and my mom and let them know that Chris was currently stable. I quietly told my mom that it didn't look good.

I watched the heart monitor in his room and watched his chest rise and fall with the help of a breathing tube. I watched the nurses come in and out and the doctors check in. I watched while Andrew showed up and sat dutifully outside the ICU room because only two people were allowed in at a time. And finally, with my arms around her, I quietly told Emily that she needed to go home and get some rest. I told her Andrew was here, and he'd call us if there were any changes.

She reluctantly agreed. She kissed her father's forehead and both of his cheeks and let me guide her from the room and out of the hospital. We left her car there, and I drove her home. When we arrived, she hugged a tearful Leon and kissed his head and told him she loved him and his Grandpa was sleeping and hanging in there, but she felt a million miles away from us.

I coaxed her into a shower and then got her settled into bed. I rubbed her back and ran my fingers through her damp hair and watched her drift off.

I'm laying next to her now watching her face, watching her breathing settle into a deep rhythm and listening to her slight snore that showed up a couple of weeks ago. I run my hand down her arm and let it rest on her stomach. She's sleeping so deeply that it doesn't wake her up, but it startles me at first, the feel of our baby moving and kicking inside her.

I cry. It's not a quiet cry. It's gasps and sobs that our baby keeps time with against my hand. I look at Emily's face illuminated by the moonlight and I quietly get out of bed and wipe my eyes. I peek in at Leon who is asleep in his bed with my mother sleeping next to him, her arms protectively and lovingly around him.

I find Emily's purse downstairs in our entryway, and I pull out her phone. I scroll through her contacts and call Dr. Craig, even though it was nearly ten o'clock at night. I ask her for the information I'm seeking and learn something I think I always knew, from the moment Emily told me she was pregnant.

I leave a note next to Emily in bed, and slide one in the clutches of my mother's hand, hoping against hope that they just keep sleeping.

And then I drive my way back to Annapolis.

Andrew is asleep in the chair in the corner of the room when I arrive. I sit in the chair next to Chris's bed. I place his hand between both of mine and I pray to a God I'm only just slightly becoming acquainted with again that Chris can hear me, somewhere deep in his subconscious. "If you're ready to let go, I promise I'll always take care of her," I whisper in his ear. "But if you're not, I want you to know that I want to marry your daughter, and I know that day would only be perfect for her if you walked her down the aisle. And I want you to know that she's having a baby girl, your granddaughter. I know Emily wants you there. I know she wants you there right after the baby is born, holding our daughter in your arms and getting a chance to start over and love again."

I squeeze his hand in mine and look and wait, but the faint glow in the room only shows me that his face is the same as it was before I started speaking.

Thirty minutes later, with no change, I creep out of the room and back to my car and drive home. Everyone is still sleeping, thankfully. I discard the notes I left for them, and I pull off my clothes and pull on my pajamas. I'm about to crawl into bed next to Emily, but something about the way she's laying on her side, with her face slightly haunted and worried even in her sleep, but her left hand resting protectively over her stomach and our child - _our daughter_ \- makes me pause.

I creep downstairs to our den and retrieve the ring from the closet.

We are both the romantic type who enjoys candles and roses and proclamations, but we are also the quiet type who say many things to each other with no words at all. We've said "marry me" hundreds of times over since December without ever actually speaking the phrase, and I know asking her is not a question that I'd ask and then wait on bated breath for the answer. She'd say yes in a heartbeat.

The ring in my hand has different meanings to me than the caveat to a traditional marriage proposal, and it has since the first time I saw it a few weeks ago. And it will mean more to her the moment she sees it.

I want her to have something new and beautiful to hang onto if her father doesn't pull through. I want her to have my heart in a ring that says, "I understand you completely and will love you every day for the rest of my life."

I quietly make my way back upstairs and slide into bed on my side facing her. She doesn't move, her breathing steady and her body still. I reach out slowly and lift her left ring finger gently up and away from her stomach. I slide the ring on and grin in the darkness when it fits so perfectly.

I lay my head on the pillow and rest my hand next to hers on her stomach. Our baby is quiet now.

She'll see the ring when she wakes up, and she'll understand. She'll look at it and see exactly what I see: A round, orange diamond that looks exactly like the harvest moon - the moon that was in the sky the night she came home to me last September; the moon that will be shining again right around the time our baby is born. She be reminded of a good harvest to come, and she'll be able to hang onto that no matter what happens.

She'll see that stone and two diamonds that look like the brightest stars in the sky flanking it, and she'll know what it means.


	18. Chapter 18

_July 23, 2016_

I know idioms of improbability in several languages. _Quand les poules aront des dents_ was something my grandfather often said - when hens have teeth. In Russian it's _kogdá rak na goré svístnet -_ when the crawfish whistles on the mountain. In Spain, it's popular to say _cuando las vacas vuelen -_ when cows fly.

I've never been a fan of these idioms. There was the plausible, improbable and impossible, and that was it. No ridiculous hyperbolic phrases necessary.

But as I sit with my father on the little side patio of the log cabin on our property, a chess board between us and a fan Derek installed pushing around the humid air to a comfortable level above us, I'm thinking there must be pigs flying somewhere.

My father has a little to do with my new propensity for exaggerated figures of speech. My father, the one who is a little weaker now, but with a stronger grasp on life. The one who is a little slower, but with a quicker smile. My daddy, who pulled through against the odds and came back home to us, a changed and better version of himself in so many ways.

We've all been slightly altered in some ways since the night of my father's heart attack.

Fran, I think, started looking at herself as the seventy-year-old woman she was, and decided to get after her new life in Virginia, joining clubs and volunteering at the local library.

Leon became more attached to my father, outwardly offering him affection at every opportunity, stopping by the log cabin to give my father a hug before he left for day camp, and making my father's cabin the first place he stopped when he got home in the afternoons.

Derek and my dad seem to have a bond now that wasn't there prior to his heart attack, and I can't entirely understand it. It's like they share some secret that I'm not in on, smiling frequently at each other when they think I'm not looking. Last week, with the permission of my father's doctor, Derek took him and Leon to a Nationals baseball game. Even though I don't entirely understand how they went from kind, but brief, exchanges to full-blown buddies seemingly overnight, I do love it. I love that I have Fran and Derek has my father; the parental entities we'd both been missing in our lives.

And my father has started really talking to me. He's shared more about his feelings, and even told me some stories about him and my mother and their early years together. Some things are difficult for him, but I'm getting more now than I ever did before.

While some of these alterations in our lives have been unexpected, they're not implausible. They don't cause me to sit there and slightly shake my head at the unlikelihood of them occurring, like I do every time Derek tells me about the few hours he spent at the Department of Justice during the day.

They don't cause a wondrous smile to break out on my lips at seemingly inopportune times, like I do every time I see the ring that now proudly rests on my left hand.

They don't cause tears to well in my eyes that I have to blink back rapidly while I'm in a meeting at work, hoping no one notices, like they do every time I feel the now very viable baby inside me rolling and kicking.

They don't cause my nerves to knock around in my chest, and my hands to slightly shake, like they're doing right now, as I sit here with my father on his porch. Because two weeks ago, when I told my father that JJ and Penelope wanted to throw me a baby shower, and I explained that it wouldn't be a traditional one with just women, but would include Hotch and Rossi and Reid and that I wanted him there, too, he asked, "What about your mother?"

I'd spoken to my mother on the phone a few times since Leon came home with us, and she knew I was pregnant. Our conversations had been polite, but not warm; they'd been similar to every other conversation I'd ever had with her in my life. My eyes opened wide when my father asked me that, and I stared at him.

He reached over and put his warm hand on mine. "Emily, life is short. I have so many regrets, and I'm only now getting a second chance to right some of my wrongs. Your mother did what she did and I did what I did, and neither of us is proud of it. It happened. What I don't want is for your mother to die and for you to live with the regret of keeping her away. If you really don't want her in your life, I understand. But if you want to try again with her, I'm okay with that. I can be at your baby shower, and she can be there, too. And we can be civil and there for our daughter. I'm sure of it."

I didn't quite share his confidence. I talked it over with Derek in hushed whispers in bed for several nights, and then hell, as they say, froze over. I called my mother and extended an olive branch. I invited her to my baby shower.

Now I'm sitting across from my father on his porch an hour before the baby shower starts. I've been kicked out of the house while JJ and Penelope and Fran set up. I'm spectacularly losing at a game of chess because I can't concentrate and my dad's always been better at this game than me. He keeps looking at me with watery eyes, patting my hand and taking in how I look. How I look is very motherly, and very pregnant, and very radiant.

I'm wearing a dress Derek picked up for me a couple of weeks ago. He'd been quiet about the purchases he made for me at the maternity store in Old Town since he first started buying me things. I'd come home from work, and the new clothing would be hanging in my closet. They were articles of clothing I'd typically pick out for myself – blouses I could wear to work, or comfortable shirts and pants I'd wear on the weekends.

When this dress first appeared in the closet - when I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant and Derek and I quietly celebrated the milestone of at least knowing that if I went into labor at that moment, our baby had a real chance at making it – I didn't know what to think. The sundress was white with some colorful embroidery. It fell to just above my knees and it looked like nothing I'd ever worn in my adult life.

I let it sit in the closet for two weeks without saying a word, but this morning, when I got out of the shower, I decided to wear it. Obviously Derek bought it for a reason, and I wanted to make him happy. I pulled it over my head and didn't quite recognize the woman staring at me in the mirror. I let my hair dry naturally so it was a little wavy, and I only put on light makeup. And then I really didn't recognize myself at all. I was softer around the edges, softer than I remember ever seeing myself. My cheeks were slightly rounded from the weight I'd gained and my shoulders weren't as rigid as they were before. My cheeks had color in them that was different than their natural color before I was pregnant. My eyes looked kinder and more loving, and the lines I had on my face were no longer a sign of age to me, but a sign of frequent laughter and smiles.

When Derek came in the bedroom to tell me it was time to head to my father's for a bit so they could set up for the shower, he was stunned when he saw me.

"It was an acrobatic feat to shave well enough to wear this dress," I said lightly. But he wasn't going to let me break the spell with humor.

He stepped towards me and reached to run his fingers through my hair. He left one hand on the back of my neck and pulled me to him, so my head was resting under his chin. "I've never seen you look more beautiful," he whispered. He trailed his fingers down my bare arms and clasped my fingers. I felt the engagement ring on my left hand pressing into my skin as he squeezed my fingers. "You look how I see you. You look how you make me feel every day. Do you see it?" he whispered.

And, blinking back tears, I nodded against his chest, finally understanding why he bought me the dress. I let go of his fingers and wrapped my arms around him while our baby did a dance between us, kicking up a storm that I knew he could feel against his stomach…

XXXXXXXXX

When I first woke up in our bed the morning after Derek and I left my father in the ICU, it was in a blind panic, knowing something was wrong. I had slept soundly for nearly ten hours after being awake for over thirty-six, after learning of my father's heart attack.

I took in my surroundings and took a deep breath. I wanted to get back to the hospital immediately, but the baby inside me distracted me from that thought. I was sleeping on my back, my left hand resting on my stomach; Derek was nestled against my side, his hand over mine. And I could feel kicking, not from the inside, but against my hand.

"Derek," I whispered.

His eyes snapped open and his head popped up immediately, like he'd only been sleeping lightly all night long.

"The baby's kicking. Can you feel it?" I asked as a tear fell from my eye.

He smiled at me and nodded. "There's been a soccer game going on inside of you much of the night. I'm surprised you slept through it. I'm glad you did, though. You needed your rest."

I grinned. I pulled my hand out from under his, with the intent that we could switch positions, his hand on my stomach and mine over his. And that's when I noticed the ring on my finger.

I'd never seen anything quite like it. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and absolutely unique and in the sunlight filling our bedroom window, the main stone looked exactly like the harvest moon in the sky.

"It's an orange diamond. Do you like it?" Derek whispered, sounding slightly uncertain and insecure.

I kept staring at the ring for several seconds not able to speak. "No." I finally deadpanned. "I love it." I smiled at him and he smiled back at me before kissing me.

We didn't discuss in that moment exactly what it meant; we both knew. Official documents and ceremony or not, I was his and he was mine. We might have had a deeper discussion at the time, but Leon came into the bedroom to check on us, and shortly after that, Andrew called to let me know my father was groggy, but awake in the hospital.

When we first went back to the hospital that day, I was just relieved that I was going to get to see my father's eyes opened, at least once more. His condition was still critical, and I still dreaded that this might be it.

I arrived that morning to the sliding door on his ICU room open. A nurse was there and Andrew was by my father's side. Derek was parking the car, and I hung back, picking up the end of the conversation going on in the room. Andrew was telling him that the coast guard had towed his boat to Annapolis, but it would cost more than it was worth to repair it.

My father's voice was gravely and weak. "But you got it?" he asked.

"I got it, and your fishing poles. I went there first before coming to the hospital last night."

I walked in the room at that moment and my eyes brimmed with tears when my father smiled at me. The conversation between him and Andrew ceased immediately, and I didn't ask what they were talking about. Obviously something very important to my father was on his boat, but he didn't want to let me in on what it was, and I let the conversation go.

He spent eight days in the hospital, and I spent an exhausting eight days going to work and visiting him after work in the evenings, fighting the traffic through DC and into Maryland. Derek sometimes came with me, and sometimes Fran or Leon did, but more often than not, they went during the day, to keep him company while I was at work. And I got time alone with him in the evenings.

We started playing chess again, for the first time since I was fourteen. He was the one who originally taught me the game, and Clyde was the one who helped me hone my skills decades later when I first started working for Interpol.

Sometimes we just sat next to each other, him in his hospital bed and me in the chair, and read quietly, each lost in the words of our own books.

On his fifth night in the hospital, when he was out of the ICU, the baby was kicking up a storm. I lifted my father's hand from the bed and lay it on my stomach. _This is what you're hanging in there for, Daddy,_ I thought as I watched his eyes fill with tears.

"Did you want to name me Emily?" I asked him.

He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes with his free hand, but he kept his other hand on my stomach. "No. Your mother," he said quietly.

I smiled at him. "What did you want to name me?"

He glanced at me and his lips made that firm line that I hadn't seen much recently, the one that said he didn't want to talk about it. I didn't understand why, and I could only imagine the conversation about what to name me was laden with difficulty between my mother and father. Those were the things he typically wouldn't talk to me about, anything that put my mother in a negative light.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "You were born and you were my Emily from the moment I first laid eyes on you."

He came home with us three days later, and we all were living and behaving slightly differently. I little more cautious, a little more appreciative of having him in our lives, a little more loving, if that was even possible.

Two days after that, when I was back to feeling content with life and worry seemed a long way away, Derek whispered in my ear in bed, "I need to talk to you about work."

I was naked, laying on my side, my heart racing, my skin cooling and my limbs still slightly trembling, with Derek pressed behind me. It had become an easier position in which to have sex as my stomach grew. I'll always remember how we were then – how Derek's left arm was under my neck and wrapped around me, his palm covering my breast; how his right arm was resting on my stomach, his skin was still slick with a fine sheet of sweat as he pressed his chest against my back, and I could feel his heart beat quickly against my body.

My heart seized in fear at his words; I just couldn't imagine him leaving me and Leon and a baby and heading out into the danger that was the BAU. I felt immediately selfish and weak for that thought, and I didn't say anything.

He continued, "Hotch came and talked to me the day your father had his heart attack. I didn't want to bring it up until your dad got home. He brought me contact information regarding a part time job at the Justice Department. It could become full-time. I don't know all the details. I wanted to talk to you about it before making the call. I'm resigning from the FBI, Em."

Tears of relief and love and sadness for the man who was holding me so tightly overflowed and ran down my face and onto his arm.

"Hey," he whispered.

"The BAU is who you are," I finally managed.

I felt him shake his head against my back, felt his lips against my neck, felt the deep inhale of breath. "It's who I _was_. This is who I am now, and I'm at peace here with you and Leon and a baby on the way. I want to enjoy it. I don't want to be taking off on cases and I don't want what happened to me in my past to drive my present anymore. This is what I want, Emily. _You_ are who I want."

We've become something different since that night nearly four weeks ago. Our motto for a long time had been _all roads lead to here_ , and it still is in some respects. But now we have _there's no time like the present_ that we frequently say as well.

When Penelope and JJ told me they wanted to have a baby shower for me, I smiled and told them yes. I think they thought they might get a fight from me, and maybe in my past they would have. I'm not one for big celebrations focused on me, but I figured I'd go for it.

And when my father encouraged me to invite my mother, I pondered it for a couple of days and ultimately decided that if I was ever going to have any personal contact with her, there was no time like the present to start. She _was_ the reason we had Leon, and I couldn't imagine I'd ever feel really good about keeping her totally at a distance after she'd helped us get him...

XXXXXXXXXX

I stare at my father as he stares at the chessboard. I smooth my hands over the sundress and my round stomach and feel the baby rolling inside me, much like my nerves are shooting off like firecrackers as the time the baby shower is about to start approaches.

We both look up when we hear feet running on the path to the log cabin; we both know that run. Leon appears on the porch, his eyes bright and a smile on his face.

"They say you can come back to the house now, Mama," he says to me.

His accent is still there, but he's fairly fluent in English now. So fluent and so happy with the neighborhood kids that we've withdrawn his application at the private school we were considering, and he'll be heading off to the school down the street with all the kids around here to start third grade in September.

"And what is that smile for, my little man?" I ask him.

"Nana made a cake," he says.

I laugh and let go of my nerves a little. But as I watch my father stand and reach for his walker, which he now uses to keep himself steady while walking, they kick back up again. Knowing my mother, she will be precisely on time, which means she and my father will be in the same room with each other for the first time in over thirty years in approximately fifteen minutes.

Leon pats my father's hand. "Should I get the present, Grandpa?" he asks.

My father nods and Leon scampers off into the cabin, returning seconds later with a wrapped gift about the size of a shoebox. "From me and Grandpa," he says to me as he leads the way back to the main house.

The air conditioning is pumping and the house is decorated with balloons and flowers and I'm suddenly ready to fake a headache or an illness to get out of this. But JJ is there and smiling at me, and Penelope is there with a similar smile on her face, and they so badly want to please me, that I stay put and put a smile on my own face.

I send Leon off with Henry into the backyard and the tree house, promising I'll send Jack their way as soon as he gets here with Hotch. I don't want Leon in the house when my mother initially gets here. He has vague memories of her being on the periphery in France when we were in court. He knows she's my mother and she helped us get him, but that's it.

Ten minutes later, the doorbell rings and I move to answer it, Derek right by my side.

My mother looks about a hundred times more nervous than I feel. She's dressed in tan suit pants, but she's skipped the jacket. Her white blouse is crisp, but there's an air of effort there, like she tried not to be too formal. She has a stack of presents in her arms, which Derek relieves her of.

She steps forward to hug me. "You look wonderful," she whispers in my ear, her voice slightly shaking.

And then she turns to find my father. He's standing back from the door, on the edge of the dining room. He has a single tear making a jagged path down the wrinkles in his face. "Elizabeth," he says with a nod. "It's good that you came."

My mother's lips quiver as she nods at him and I'm thinking this whole thing was a terrible mistake, when Fran makes her way to the front door. She smiles at my mother and holds out her hand. "I'm Fran Morgan. Derek's mom. It's good to finally meet you, and I'm so glad you're here. I could use some help in the kitchen if you wouldn't mind. I'm running behind."

I know Fran is not really running behind. I know Fran probably had every morsel of food planned and measured and timed down to the minute. If she's behind now, it's because she did it on purpose, for this reason, to give my mother something to do and ease the tension in the room.

My mother smiles at her and shakes her hand. "Call me Elizabeth. I'm happy to help."

When I considered my mother and father seeing each other again, I forgot to consider Fran Morgan. Our ace in the hole; the world's best buffer.

The party progresses from there, an eclectic mix of people who mingle with each other – the team and Will and my parents and Fran, my administrative assistant and a couple of other people from my work, and Derek's sisters who flew in late this morning and made it to the house about thirty minutes after the shower started.

My father sticks close to Rossi, who he finds easy to talk to. My mother helps Fran and talks to Hotch when she's not busy. They pretty much stay away from each other; they aren't there for each other, they are they for me, just like my father said they could be.

I feel like I'm watching the whole day from within a dream. I catch glimpses - Leon talking with my mom and her tenderly patting his head; my father talking with Henry, who is as enamored with him as Leon is; the smiles thrown my way that make me feel like I'm the center of attention, which I slowly find myself getting used to.

There aren't any awkward moments. We eat and talk. JJ and Penelope have organized a few mellower baby shower games that we play. They get the guys to participate in a timed race to see who can chug a baby bottle full of juice the fastest, and JJ and I laugh heartily, sitting beside each other on the couch, watching Reid struggle with the task.

"It's unbelievable seeing you like this," she says to me. Then she squeezes me around the shoulders. "It's one of the best things I've ever seen in my life."

The gifts are an overwhelming array of gender-neutral baby clothes, toys and other necessities, and I can't believe we're going to have a little person in this house who is going to use them. My mother's gifts are not immediately tangible, even though they come wrapped in three boxes. In one there is a catalogue print out of cribs, another with dressers, and another with changing tables.

"JJ told me you hadn't picked out the baby furniture yet. You and Derek can pick out what you like and I'd like to buy that for you. If you want me to," she says softly, almost embarrassed.

I blink rapidly and smile at her. Derek squeezes my hand and we both nod at her. Yes, I can let her do that for us.

The gift from Leon and my father is last, and Leon slides onto Derek's lap as I start pulling off the wrapping paper. Inside the box is a small glass bottle, smaller than mine, with a ship inside. _Petit Lune_ is painted on the side. Little moon.

"Do you like it? Grandpa helped me make it," Leon says excitedly in French. He sometimes does this, slipping into his native tongue when he wants to speak quickly. "It's the best one I've made. The name was my idea. It's like your boat."

I inhale deeply and exhale slowly, barely containing my tears. I know if they start, I won't be able to stop them. I turn to Leon. "I love it, my little man. It's the best gift."

Leon grins proudly and hugs me. I look over his shoulder at my father who is smiling and nodding his head.

He retreats to his cabin for a nap after that, sneaking out slowly, Rossi walking him back. I think he does it to avoid an awkward goodbye when my mother leaves, which she does, with another hug for me, at the precise time the party is scheduled to end. My co-workers leave then as well. But no one else seems in a hurry to leave, and I'm glad. They are my comfort zone, even Derek's sisters, the people I can take a deep breath and relax around. They stay with us into the evening, and we eat the party leftovers for dinner. My father rejoins us and I get the pleasure of watching him beat Reid at chess.

When our house clears out much later, Fran takes Desiree and Sarah to her apartment over the garage where they'll stay the night; there's plenty of room in our house, but I think Fran wants some time with her daughters.

Leon is exhausted after a day running around with Jack and Henry; he takes his shower and is practically asleep before I've managed to read one paragraph of a book to him.

I find Derek in our bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed and kicking off his shoes. I smile. He is the reason this is my life now, and it's as damn near a perfect life as one could get.

"Today went…" he begins, but I shush him by placing a finger over his lips. I don't need to rehash the day. I know it was wonderful and he knows it was wonderful.

I straddle his legs and attempt to sit and then find myself sliding down his legs, my stomach too large for me to find space on his thighs any more. I laugh and he laughs. I push on his chest so flops backwards on the bed and try again, getting my knees on the bed so that I'm straddling his waist this time.

I have to get up on my hands and knees in order to be able to bend my head forward enough to kiss him, and kiss him I do, with every word I want to tell him about how I feel about him and our life and the baby and today traveling from my lips to his. I feel his hands slip under the loose material of my dress and slide up my thighs and moan into his mouth.

He pulls his lips away from mine, panting slightly. "Wait, Emily."

I open my eyes to look at his face. "What?"

He moves his arm down his body and I feel him shift up slightly, watch as he reaches into his back pocket, and then his hand is moving towards me, a small envelope in his fingers.

"Your father asked me to give this to you after everyone left tonight."

I sit back on my knees and take the envelope from Derek's hand. I feel his eyes on me as I open it. Inside there is a small piece of paper with just two names on it; one for a boy and one for a girl. And I know what they are – they are what I asked him about a month ago. They are the names he would have chosen for me back in 1970, one for if I was a boy, and one for if I was a girl.

And I know what they mean. I don't know if we'll use them, but I know with certainty that my destiny was written before I was born, because I finally know with certainty how my father thought of me even before I took my first breath.

I let the tears fall that I'd been holding back much of the day. I let them fall down my face as I put the piece of paper aside. Derek is watching me curiously, and I shake my head slightly. I'll tell him, but not in this moment. In this moment, I just want to be with him, with our skin against each other, holding onto each other and our beautiful reality.


	19. Chapter 19

_September 3, 2016_

How does the average forty-four-year-old man measure time?

It's a question I've asked myself a lot lately, though I'd be hard pressed to give an average answer to anyone. Time for me used to be measured in cases, and people saved, and miles travelled on a plane. It used to be calculated with the number of criminals behind bars and the number of random, regular hours I managed to sleep during any given week. Dates were categorized by significant triumphs and losses while I was on the job.

Part of the reason Emily and I work so well together is that she used to measure time in the same way; we both used to file dates away in our mind when something significant happened in our jobs, so that when those dates came around in subsequent years we could either remember our victory or pay quiet homage to the loss.

And then we came together and started learning to measure the hours and days differently. I started looking at the timeline of my life as Without Emily and With Emily.

Last October, a day for me was measured in the number of times I could make Emily smile or laugh. A week was measured in the expanse of time that had passed since either one of us had cried.

Emily said she wanted to try and get pregnant and time was measured in our racing heartbeats after each attempt.

We brought Leon home, and minutes were new words he learned, or that quiet breath of time I absorbed every time he hugged me or I watched him hug Emily.

When Emily told me she was pregnant, time took on new meaning for me, where I measured the days by her changing body. At first, I had to look hard for those changes and sometimes I think I imagined them for my own benefit, like if I could just detect the slightest increase in the slope of her stomach, it meant our baby was growing.

As her due date now approaches, I can find changes every day, and I categorize them in my mind so I'll never forget.

Time is tracing my finger over a new stretch mark on her stomach; she doesn't have a lot, and she doesn't understand how I can possibly be so enamored with them, but she stops asking when I trail my lips carefully over those marks. _Our baby's growing, Emily, and your body is doing this for us._

Time is measuring the weight of her changing breasts and smoothing my hands over the veins that are now visible under the surface of her ivory skin, as her body prepares itself to feed our child in a few weeks.

Time is watching her grow more excited rather than exhausted by these last few weeks of her pregnancy. It's waking up when she does in the middle of the night for the second or third time to go to the bathroom; it's catching a glimpse of her face in the glow of the bathroom nightlight, not exasperated, but with a slight smile on her face.

The night after the baby shower, she lay naked on her side in bed facing me, the small lamp on her bedside table turned on. Her cheeks were still flushed and her hairline was damp. She fingered the edges of the piece of paper her father had given her and alternated between looking at it and looking at me. I faced her with one arm under my head and one hand on her thigh, my thumb brushing against her smooth skin.

"Do you know what your last name means?" she asked.

I smiled and shook my head. I honestly didn't. I'd never looked it up; it had never occurred to me to research it. "Do you know what it means?" I asked.

She nodded. "I found it a few days ago during lunch when I was looking online for possible baby names. It means sea dweller, or bright, or bright sea," she whispered. "It's what my father wanted to name me if I was a boy."

How strange it was to hear those words. Strange and magical. If I had any say in the matter, the first name that her father wanted to give her if she was born a boy would someday be her last name - if she wanted that. It also made me second guess for the hundredth time not telling her that we were having a girl, or at least not telling her that I knew what we were having - that I had called her doctor. That I had gone to the hospital while she was sleeping and told her father that a granddaughter was on the way. That he woke up and the first moment we had alone he'd told me he'd heard me that night.

"What's the girl's name?" I asked after several long seconds.

She looked at me and reached her arm back to put the paper on her nightstand. "Old fashioned. Unique. It means nearly the same thing as Morgan, but I'm not sure if I want to use it."

We fell asleep that night after putting our pajamas back on, and I didn't press. The next morning the paper was still there on her nightstand. She wasn't hiding it from me; she was just torn regarding whether or not she wanted to talk about it. But when I was alone in the bedroom the next morning, I picked up the paper and fingered the edges much like Emily had the night before. She was right, it was an old-fashioned name. It didn't matter to me, though. I fell in love with it instantly. I could never imagine Emily being named anything beside Emily, but I could imagine our daughter with the name Chris originally wanted if his child was a girl. And when I looked the name up online, I only wanted it more, especially when I saw the unique nickname; the shortened version of the name that wasn't so terribly old-fashioned.

We didn't discuss it then, though. To press too much would have given Emily a clue that I knew we were having a girl, and I knew she wanted a surprise. We threw baby names back and forth to each other. We kept the conversations about names light.

Two weeks ago, her belly button completely popped out and she looked at me and laughed quietly while I stared at her body. "It's done," she whispered. I put my hand on her stomach and smiled. "Almost," I whispered back.

It's not that she isn't uncomfortable. Her lower back hurts, and her feet ache and are slightly swollen by the end of the day. She could live and die by a bowl of ice cream or a popsicle or any cold food while sitting practically on top of one of our air conditioning vents. And the other night when we were kissing and I slipped my hand up and under her nightshirt, she whispered, "I haven't shaved in over a week."

I stopped moving my hand and pulled my lips away from hers. "Do you not want to? I could just rub your back, or we could just sleep."

She touched my face and smiled at me. "No. I'm just warning you."

I kissed her nose and grinned. "I don't mind, Sasquatch." And then I kissed her lips again.

"Derek," she murmured when she pulled her lips away from mine several long seconds later. "Call me Sasquatch again, and I'll end you." I felt her smile against my skin, and then she laughed, her head thrown back in joy and happiness.

I was blinded by a Without Emily memory. February 14, 2007. We talked Kilgore Trout, and it was the first time I'd ever seen her with pure joy in her eyes. That joy is every day with her now. She laughs a lot. A lot more than I ever thought possible for her, and I've stopped being able to count or calculate those laughs as a form of time measurement. Her laughter is so often and frequent that it just _is._

On August fifth, I woke up and was drawn back to the past, to another one of those dates I'd categorized in the Without Emily calendar in my mind. _Three hundred sixty-five days ago, I woke up chained and naked in a dank cell_ , I thought to myself when the alarm went off. I remembered it clearly, thinking that my life as I knew it was over, learning that I was going to be sold, knowing what that probably meant for me.

Without saying anything, I think Emily remembered the significance of that day nearly as instantly as I did. I had some work to do for the DoJ from home that day, but didn't need to go into DC. I left to bring Leon to day camp before Emily left for work, but when I returned home, her car was still in the driveway. Curious, I looked around the first floor of the house before heading upstairs.

I found her in our bedroom, standing in a robe and waiting for me. "Come here," she said, smiling at me.

She undressed me slowly, and I didn't quite know what was going on. I watched as she grabbed my phone from my pocket before pushing my shorts down. I kicked them off and raised my eyebrow at her. She moved my body so that I was standing sideways. I watched as she walked - not waddled; I'd never call it a waddle since I valued my life - and placed my phone on the dresser.

"Ready?" she asked with a grin on her face.

I knew then. I knew the countless minutes I'd spent holding her body while looking in our bathroom mirror with the desire plainly on my face - that I wished I could record those moments and keep them forever - did not go unnoticed by her.

I watched as she pulled her robe off and let it fall to the floor. I watched as she set the timer on my phone. I watched her quickly take the steps back towards me and turn her body, so her back was pressed against my chest. And I knew exactly what I wanted the pictures to look like. I kept our bodies in a position so the camera captured a side view, one of my arms looped over her breasts, and the other arm and hand coming around to hold her stomach, to hold the baby inside her. I pressed my lips to her neck and I heard the faint clicks of my phone as a few pictures snapped.

When my phone was done taking pictures, we stayed like that, suspended in a time-continuum that felt like hours when it was only seconds. "So you have something good to look at today that's better than the memories of last year," she finally breathed out.

I looked at those pictures all day while she was at work. I looked out how my brown skin melded against the pale white of her in a perfect union. I looked at our bodies that fit together better than any two bodies ever possibly could. I looked at my arms around her and my head tilted with my lips against her neck. I studied with artist's hands and eyes the Mona Lisa smile on her lips; a smile like nothing I'd ever seen on her face before.

The anniversary of my auction, back a year ago when I thought I was doomed for an indeterminate amount of time rape and torture until I could escape, and instead found myself with Emily, we went to visit Melissa McCarthy. It was Emily's idea. Missy was kidnapped from Alexandria when she was a young girl by the same man who took me nearly a decade later.

We found her family's home that was still standing, but clearly run down. We knew that her father had lost his job after Missy was kidnapped, and they'd been scraping by with odd jobs. Apparently having their daughter home for nearly a year hadn't improved their financial situation much, but Missy was doing well. The trust fund Emily had set up was providing her with therapy and she'd done well enough with online courses during the year that she would be joining in for her senior year of high school. She was both excited and nervous at the prospect. We visited with her and her family for several hours while Leon stayed home with my mom. We left Missy's house that day with the promise that if she kept her grades up, no college was beyond her, that our scholarship fund would pay for her.

I also looked around the home that housed so much joy for Missy's family for years before she was kidnapped, and now housed the memory of sorrow and turmoil. I saw two parents who had managed to stay together through hell and had welcomed their daughter home with loving arms, but didn't have it in them to financially improve the appearance of the home too much. I saw Emily nod at me slightly. "I'll send a contractor I know over this week. We'll get this place painted and the kitchen and bathrooms updated," I told Missy's parents with a thick voice.

It was another moment where Emily was helping me obliterate the bad memories in my personal calendar.

When I woke up on August twenty-ninth, I didn't have bad memories. I had the thought that it was Emily's last week of work before maternity leave on the forefront of my mind. I had the memories of a bright, sunny bedroom at an estate outside of London, and Emily's body under mine and over mine and surrounding me all afternoon and nearly all night.

It surprised me when I woke up in our bed in Alexandria that morning and found Emily laying in bed staring at me, her fingers running over my left hand and a smile on her lips. "Rossi pulled off a wedding for JJ and Will in a little less than twenty-four hours. Do you think we could do it in five days?"

I was stunned into silence. We'd talked about a wedding here and there, but it was always well into the future in my mind, after the baby was born. And here Emily was saying she wanted to do this in a handful of days. I had a litany of questions - _Are you sure? Do you think we should wait? What about your mother? She's in Italy right now._ However, much like when Emily told me she wanted to try to have a baby, I knew she really meant this. No questions. So I didn't question it. I wanted to marry her with every fiber of my being.

"I definitely think we could pull it off," I scuffed out in my sleepy, morning voice.

Which is why I'm standing here now at dusk on the evening of September third at the front of the dock on our property. There's a lay minister standing to my right with the water beyond him, an arch above my head, and a small cluster of the people I care about most in the world sitting in chairs on our lawn to my left.

We've kept this casual. I'm in a dress shirt and tie, but there are no tuxedos. There's no traditional wedding party. There's Leon sitting next to Hotch in the front row who knows he's supposed to step up and hand us the wedding rings when it's time. There's JJ quieting a fussy baby Zachary, and the rest of the team. They're all smiling at me. My mom and sisters are right here. And Elizabeth is here, too, having taken a flight home the night before in order to be here for the wedding. Beside her is an empty chair and a walker.

Christopher Prentiss does not need his walker at the moment, because he's standing farther back waiting for Emily, and when she appears by his side and links her arms with his, every vow and speech I resaid in my mind and rewrote in my heart and repeated until it was memorized is suddenly not good enough.

Emily's dress is a light green. It clings to her upper body and flows out around her stomach, coming to a graceful stop at her ankles. Her hair is pulled back and she's holding a bouquet and even from twenty yards away in the dimmer light of dusk, I can see the color in her cheeks and how her eyes shine.

The walk from our back porch to where I'm standing probably takes less than a minute, but it feels like an eternity to me. I'm not sure I'm breathing.

And then she's _right there._ She's right in front of me and I watch her father kiss her cheek. I watch him gingerly make his way the few steps to his seat without anyone's support. I watch as this woman I can't believe is mine moves to stand in front of me.

She's grinning. And then she laughs lightly. "I love you. Take a deep breath," she whispers.

So I do. I listen to the words of the minister and I repeat what I'm supposed to repeat. But when it's time for the vows and I'm supposed to say something, I glance to my left and see everyone sitting there. Suddenly every word I want to say seems too private for an audience. It's not that I'm embarrassed. My love for Emily transcends embarrassment and doubt and I'd shout how I feel from the rooftops for all the world to hear in a heartbeat.

But there are only two things I want to say to her in that moment, and I want to say them to only her. I step forward and wrap my arms around her. I bend my head so my lips are against her ear. "We stripped down the layers of ourselves and found each other when there was only the core of our beings left. We grew together from there," I whisper so low that only she can here.

Her arms come around me and I feel her nod on my shoulder. I hear her breath hitch and know there are tears in her eyes. I bend my upper body slightly so that I can hold her more firmly with the baby inside her between us. "I know," I whisper.

"What?" she asks back, just as quietly.

"I called Dr. Craig to find out what we were having, so that I could go back to the hospital and tell her father. So that I could help him want to hang on."

She freezes slightly in my arms and then bands her arms around me impossibly tighter. "Tell me." Her words are just a breath against the side of my face.

I smile slightly. I smile and it's my turn to laugh a little. "Well, we won't be having a Morgan Morgan," I say quietly.

I feel her arms release me and she steps back slightly. She looks in my eyes, and there are tears on her cheeks. Tears, but a smile on her lips. And then she tosses her head back slightly and laughs. "Really?" she asks.

"Really," I say.

Strange vows for sure, but perfect for us.


	20. Chapter 20

_September 22, 2016_

To the untrained eye, the moon looks full tonight, but I know better. I've been following the different waxing phases of this particular moon from the start, and it's still in its gibbous phase, a little slice of shadow obscuring its roundness in the sky. Not quite full.

I'm sitting in the same place I've been sitting every night since September tenth, since this moon appeared as just a sliver in the sky. The glider in the baby's room is at the perfect angle to the window, where I can look out until about eleven o'clock every night and catch a glimpse of the moon, before it's too high in the sky and disappears from view.

My nightly vigils in this room happened spontaneously. I'd woken up around ten o'clock on September tenth to go to the bathroom, and Derek had woken slightly as well. "Just the bathroom," I'd whispered to him. "Go back to sleep."

He had, and by the time I came out of the bathroom, his breathing was deep and even again. I'd felt drawn to the baby's room, and I went, sitting in the glider and staring out the window, finding that sliver of light in the sky - the harvest moon in its very beginning phase.

From the window, I also have a perfect view of my father's cabin, and I've seen him every night that I've sat here for the past twelve days. He sits on the little porch and watches this moon, too. I know he sees me. I know because I don't always sit in the dark; I alternate between staring out the window and flicking on the small lamp on the table beside the glider, so that I can take in the baby's room.

The second night I sat vigil in this room for about an hour, I found the moon in the sky and my father on his porch. I flicked on the light and took in the maple furniture my mother had bought for us - the crib and dresser and changing table - all sitting there waiting, much like I was. When I turned the light off to look outside again, my father shined a flashlight beam in the window.

I'd laughed lightly over a sob stuck in my throat.

When I was five and we lived in Cairo, our home was a U-shape around a courtyard. My bedroom was on one tip of the U, and my father's study was on the other tip. At night, after I'd been tucked into bed, I'd reach over to my bedside lamp and flick it on and off once.

" _Are you there?"_

And almost always my father would respond by turning the light off and on in his den. " _I'm here, Lune."_

Three flashes meant _I love you,_ and two flashes meant _goodnight._

That night in the baby's room, when my father's flashlight beam cut through the window for the first time and then went off again, I turned the light in the baby's room off and on three times.

And my father shined the flashlight on and off three times. _I love you, too, Lune._

Tonight I'm sitting here, gazing between the moon and the shadowy outline of my father on his porch. I've been calculating the minutes in my mind, but I haven't switched on the light yet to let my father know I'm here. He can probably see my shadowy figure through the window, but he's kept his flashlight off so far, too...

I've been restless all day. I couldn't keep my body still from the moment I woke up this morning, first taking a slow, early morning walk up and down our street while everyone else was still sleeping, then walking Leon to school a couple of hours later with Derek, walking again slowly with my father after lunch, and then walking back to get Leon when school let out for the day.

I kept thinking that in all the nesting I'd done in the past couple of weeks, I was missing something. All the baby clothes were clean and folded in the dresser. The room was painted a sea foam green. Fran had made a new fitted cover for the sides and bottom of the bassinet JJ was letting us use and it sat in the corner of our room. We had diapers and everything else we needed.

I was searching far and wide in my mind and heart wondering what it was I was missing. And then it came to me as Leon took my hand when we were nearly back to the house after school, after all his friends had turned off the sidewalk and headed to their own homes. He squeezed my hand and looked up at me. "I love you, Mama," he said with his impish grin that reminded me so much of the impish grin I'd been missing for over a year now.

"I love you, too, my little man," I responded. And the piece clicked into place, that last piece of unfinished business I hadn't even acknowledged as unfinished business up until that moment.

This afternoon, while Fran was volunteering at the library and my father was likely deep into the nap he always took before dinner, I'd asked Derek if he'd go out on the boat with me and Leon and he'd agreed. Leon's smile had reminded me of Clyde's, the one person in my life I cherished who wasn't there to share all of this with me. I'd been missing him deeply since my wedding a few weeks before, and it bothered me that his ashes had been sitting in a closet for over a year now, like he'd done everything right for me, but I hadn't done right by him yet.

I'd packed a small bag with supplies, and when Derek saw me carrying Clyde's urn down the dock, his eyes had gotten moist and he'd blinked rapidly and smiled at me, nodding his head slightly.

"What's that, Mama?" Leon asked when he saw the urn.

"I'll tell you when we get out on the water," I replied while brushing my hand over his head.

I handed the urn and my bag to Derek and he took both things and set them down before helping my swelling body awkwardly onto the boat. We didn't hoist the sails, opting for the engine instead. We didn't go out very far at all since it would be getting dark soon. Across the river from our house sits Piscataway National Park, and I steered the boat towards one of the little alcoves along the park boundaries.

I looked at Leon, who was smiling and staring out at the water. I placed my hand on Derek's leg and squeezed his thigh, taking a deep breath.

"Leon," I said softly. He turned his blue eyes on me and smiled again. "Do you know what cremation is?"

His eyes opened wide and he nodded slowly. "My mother, when she died, Lenora told me she was cremated. I talked about it in therapy."

I smiled softly and pulled the wooden box with his mother's ashes out of my bag. I reached my arm forward to hand it to him, and he stood, stepping closer to take it from my hands. "My mother?" he asked softly.

I nodded and watched as Derek pulled Leon towards him and settled the sweet, perceptive boy on his lap. I reached for Clyde's urn.

"These ashes belong to my friend, Clyde. He died a little over a year ago and I miss him. He was the reason why we were able to rescue you, and that same night, he saved your Papa's life. I want to keep him with me forever, and I will in my heart, but it's time to set his ashes free. I'd like to believe that when I do, all the good parts of him will be out there in the water, drifting and spreading. I'd like to believe that no matter where we are on this river or any ocean on any boat, a part of him will be with us."

Leon was staring between my face, the urn in my hands and the wooden box in his own hands.

It had been a wonderful, but therapeutic, several months with Leon. I couldn't imagine not having him in our lives, but we'd had many difficult conversations I'd never imagined having with an eight-year-old since he'd come home with us. Conversations about good and bad and the vast expanse of gray areas in between, conversations about drug addiction, conversations about rape and consensual sex, and anal sex and vaginal intercourse, and even sex trafficking. He'd seen and experienced so much that there was no way to shelter him at all, and so we talked. And between us and his therapist, and Fran and my father we'd somehow navigated the waters, speaking honestly with Leon when he needed to talk about something or had questions, while teaching him how to interact at an age-appropriate level with his friends.

"My mother wasn't good like Clyde," he whispered while staring at the wooden box in his hand. "I'm not sure I want her out there on the water."

I touched his cheek and Derek kissed his head. "Those are your ashes to do with what you want," Derek said. "We can put the box back in the closet and you don't have to think about it until you're ready, or you could keep the box in your room, or you could let her go. Whatever you want, Leon."

Leon looked at me and I nodded in confirmation before leaning over to kiss his cheek.

I stood and walked to the stern of the boat. I unscrewed the top of Clyde's urn. I kissed the cool metal and let a few tears fall from my eyes. "I didn't let your story be mine. I wish you were here to see me now," I whispered before tipping the urn over the side of the boat and watching his ashes catch in the wind before settling on the water and slowly disappearing.

I felt the presence of Derek's body behind me, and his warm, familiar hand on my back. "I love you," he said in my ear.

"How do you open it?" Leon asked. We turned to look him struggling with the lid on the box. It was a tight fit and he couldn't lift it open.

Derek took the box from him and opened the lid and Leon joined us. "Maybe if she's out there with Clyde, he can help her be good, too. I think she could have been, if she didn't use drugs. Sometimes she'd hug me and read to me. Sometimes." His voice was so soft that we could barely hear it. We watched him tip the box and his mother's ashes as they took flight and then settled like Clyde's had.

The three of us stood there and stared out at the water for a few minutes. I put my arm around Leon's shoulders and hugged him to me. "Did you know when I was a little girl, your grandpa used to take me out on the water and he'd have me draw pictures to put in bottles so that someday people might find them and smile."

Leon nodded his head against my body and looked up at me. "Grandpa told me. I drew one when we brought this boat to the new house."

I grinned at him. "Would you like to make one now?"

He nodded again and we went back to sit. I opened my bag and passed Leon a piece of paper and some colored pencils. He laid on his stomach on the deck of the boat and got to work, and I sat next to Derek. He kept his arm around me and I leaned my head on his shoulder.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Better than okay," I responded. I truly was. I was just quietly at peace, still slightly restless, but calmer than I had been when I woke up in the morning.

"You're quiet," he said with his mouth against my hair.

"We've all been quieter this past week. I think we're all just waiting. I think I needed to do this first, though," I said. It was true. We'd all been communicating more with smiles and our eyes instead of words for several days now.

We sat and let the water rock us while Leon drew. The sun was just beginning to set when he stood with his picture and showed it to us. It was the six of us, me and Derek and Fran and my father and Leon, and I was holding a baby in my arms. "I hope you are happy like me," was written on the top.

"For someone to find, and for my mother," he said softly.

I nodded and hugged him to me, the picture pressed between us. "You are a phenomenal little boy and we love you so much."

I released him and pulled one of the many bottles and corks that were in our house for future little ships from my bag. He rolled up the paper and put it in the bottle. Derek pushed the cork down firmly and handed the bottle back to Leon. He shook his head. "You throw it," Leon said.

We watched Derek stand. I watched the muscles of his back move under his t-shirt as he drew his arm back. He threw the bottle with all his strength, in a high arch, and we watched it land in the water far away from our boat.

He turned to us. "Ready?" he asked me.

He didn't ask "Ready to go home," or "Ready to head back." Just "Ready?" I felt butterflies in my stomach, and I think maybe I knew then. I was finally ready, and we were going to get our harvest moon baby.

I'd never believed before last August that fate or destiny could be so kind or generous, but then again, I'd never really given them a chance.

We steered the boat back home. We made dinner. We sat around the table with Fran and my father and Leon told them about letting his mother's ashes go out on the water. He told them about his picture. For their part, they were like they were well-trained to be with Leon, loving without heavy tears that accompanied any story he told about his sad life before us.

Derek and I made love after Leon went to bed, and a thickness settled over me _._ _This is it for awhile,_ I thought. When I climbed on top of him as gracefully as I possibly could, he raised his eyebrows at me. Though the position hadn't been the most comfortable for a couple of months now because it made my lower back ache, I just wanted to see Derek's face that night. And maybe Derek felt it, too, that sense that tonight was the night. I'm not sure. We were both quiet and peaceful and kept holding back for each other, not wanting it to be over, making it last much longer than we typically would or could, my back not hurting at all.

Derek drifted off to sleep pretty quickly after that. I waited, wanting to go to the baby's room and look at the moon and flash lights at my father, but I must have drifted off. A little after ten o'clock, I woke up when a contraction ripped through my body.

Dr. Craig and JJ both told me unequivocally that I'd know the difference between a real contraction and a Braxton Hicks contraction right away, and were they ever right. That one wasn't terrible, but it was intense, and I knew it would only get more difficult from there on out. I bit my lip to keep from crying out and waited the forty or so seconds until the pain dissipated.

I laid there with my heart hammering, listening to Derek's peaceful sleeping beside me. I waited and glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes later, another contraction came, and I silently endured that one as well. When it was over, I sat up in bed. I felt Derek stir. "Bathroom," I told him. "Go back to sleep."

For some reason, I just wanted a little time to myself. It was all I could think about. I'd need to call my doctor soon, just to let her know if these contractions kept up, and I knew they likely would. But there was no reason to wake Derek or anyone else in that moment; we'd be at home through this early part of labor for several hours probably. We both should sleep as much as possible, but sleep wasn't something I wanted or was capable of in the moment.

I crept down the hall to the baby's room and sat in the glider...

I stare at my father's shadow on his porch. I wonder if he knows. Somehow, I think he might. I think we've both been watching this moon so closely every night for the same reasons. Him and my mother may have never been on the same page, but he and I always were, from the moment I was born until the day he left.

I turn the light on and off and my father responds with his flashlight. _I'm here._

I hear footsteps in the hallway and recognize them as Leon's. His body appears in the doorway. "Mama?" he asks.

"What are you doing up little man?" I ask with a smile while glancing at my watch. It's been eighteen minutes since my last contraction, and if another one is going to come, it's going to be any time now.

"I have to go to the bathroom and I saw a light," he says.

"Go to the bathroom and then come back here. I want to show you something, and then I'll tuck you back into bed."

I rock in the glider slightly. I see the faint shadow of light down the hall when Leon flips the switch in the bathroom and I hear the door close. The contraction rips through me and I groan slightly, trying to breathe through it like the birthing classes Derek and I attended instructed me to do. I squeeze the arms of the rocking chair and grit my teeth and wait out the pain for nearly a minute. I'm vaguely aware of the toilet flushing and the sound of water running in the bathroom sink.

By the time Leon reappears in the baby's room, the pain is gone, but I can feel that my skin is slightly sweaty and shaky. I beckon him to me and pull him close to my body, pointing out the window. "Do you see who's out there?"

Leon's sleepy eyes focus on the window and I watch him smile. "Grandpa."

I tell him the story about when I lived in Egypt and what the flashing lights mean. Leon reaches for the switch on the lamp cord and flicks it on and off three times. He smiles with his whole face when my father flashes the light back three times.

"We need to get you back to bed, Leon. School tomorrow."

He nods and flashes the light twice for "Goodnight."

My father's light flashes twice. There's a pause and then it flashes twice more.

It's my turn to smile brightly. "I think he saw you in the window, Leon. He's saying goodnight to both of us. Let's go."

I get Leon back into his bed and then quietly creep back to our bedroom where Derek is still sleeping. I carefully crawl back into the bed and lay on my left side, facing away from him and towards my bedside clock.

I wait. I grit through three more contractions between eleven o'clock and midnight, and I know for certain this is the real deal. Every twenty minutes for the past two hours now.

It's five minutes after midnight and officially September twenty-third. It looks like our baby girl is going to make her appearance when that beautiful burst of orange sits high and proud and full in the sky tomorrow night. She might possibly come sooner, but I don't believe it will be later.

Because I've won fate's lottery several times over in the past year, and she's not going to stop dishing out my good fortune just yet. I believe that with everything in me.

I roll my body over and face Derek. The nightlight in our bathroom is just enough for me to make out his facial features. I run my thumb over the arch of one eyebrow and trail it over his nose and down to his lips. I trace those lips with my finger tips and watch them twitch lightly in his sleep.

"Derek," I whisper.

His eyes pop open immediately and gaze into mine.

I smile at the man in front of me, wondering for the thousandth time since last August how I got so damn lucky.

You can't undo your history, and you can't rewrite it. But you can reclaim everything you liked about yourself that you thought you lost forever. The canvas might be different - a little older, a little wiser, a little more worn - but the picture it contains can still be beautiful. Everyone who lives on this property is living proof of that.

And our canvas was about to get a whole lot more beautiful.

"Derek, I'm in labor."


	21. Chapter 21

_A/N - Sorry for the slow burn. I just really wanted to do this from Derek's perspective, so I needed to get there. :)_

* * *

 _September 23, 2016_

I'm not sure how most husbands feel when their wives are in labor. All I know is that I've spent the better portion of the past eighteen hours wishing I could trade places with Emily and take on all her pain and discomfort. Or at least crawl inside her and experience it with her so I'd know exactly how she felt.

At first it wasn't so bad. I laid in bed facing her, in shock, with my heart beating quickly and tears barely held behind the surface of my eyes when she told me was in labor. She left a hand on my chest while she called Dr. Craig's after-hours number with her free hand.

"Why didn't you call her cell phone?" I asked her when she disconnected the call.

"Because we're not going anywhere for quite awhile, and there's no reason to wake her up. Her call service will do that if we need to head into the hospital in the middle of the night, but I doubt it. We probably won't be going anywhere until morning, if even then," Emily responded. She kissed my forehead and smoothed down the lines I knew where there.

I knew what we were supposed to do. I knew that because of Emily's age, Dr. Craig wanted Emily to head straight towards the hospital when her water broke, or when her contractions were about ten minutes apart, instead of waiting for that five to eight minute mark.

All I could see in my mind at that moment was the morning traffic into DC and possibly having to fight it. All I wanted in that moment was Emily safe in a hospital, hooked up to a fetal monitor so I knew everything was okay. I wanted her within easy access to the drugs that could alleviate her pain; she'd stated emphatically that she had no intention of using them, but I wanted us there if she changed her mind.

And all Emily wanted was to stay at home as long as possible.

She'd kissed me again there in the bed, just a little after midnight. She'd smiled softly at me. "You should get as much sleep as you can tonight," she whispered. She was eerily calm, and it kind of freaked me out.

"What about you?" I asked.

"I want to take a bath before my water breaks. My back is a little sore."

I sat up in bed. "You rest. I'll start the bath."

The funny thing was, I knew that Emily - the Emily who was experiencing physical pain. I hadn't seen her in a very long time, but I knew her. The worse the pain got, the more she tried to convince me or anyone else that she was just fine, the more she pushed people away so they wouldn't see her showing any sign of weakness or pain. Emily had made huge strides when it came to letting me share her emotional challenges with her, but she hadn't yet attempted being vulnerable when she was physically hurting.

If she thought I was just going to doze while she suffered through her contractions alone, she was nuts.

She moved to stand from the bed. "I can do it, Derek. It's okay," she said.

I reached for her arm. "Not this time, Emily Prentiss. You can come with me to the bathroom, or you can rest. I'll sleep when you sleep and I'll be there with you when you can't." I smiled softly at her wide eyes. "We're married and this is our baby and you're going to let me love you through this pain. You can cry when it hurts or you can scream every foul name in the world at me if you need to. Consider it your final challenge in this new life of ours - letting me in when you're physically hurting."

She blinked at me for several seconds. She nodded slowly. She smiled slightly and then laughed softly. "I haven't been Emily Prentiss for three weeks, remember?" she asked. "It's Emily Morgan now."

And then, miraculously, she relaxed against the pillows and let me go start her bath. Better still, she had me get in the water with her. She sat between my legs and leaned her back against my chest, and I kept adding hot water between massaging her shoulders and kissing her neck. She squeezed my fingers through three more contractions that were about eighteen minutes apart while we sat in that water, and in between them, she rested the back of her head against my shoulder and lightly dozed.

I'm not sure it was physical pain at that moment. I think it was more just the emotions she was feeling about everything that was happening to her body, and me being right there with her. After the last contraction, there were tears in her eyes. "I'm scared," she whispered.

"I've got you," I whispered back. But the truth was, I was a little scared, too. I knew how this was all supposed to go, but I hadn't really put myself in the position until that moment to imagine myself watching Emily go through the full course of labor.

I'd watched her body change over the months. I'd rubbed her back and her feet when she was tired and sore. I'd felt and even seen the baby move inside her. I'd held her hand through every doctor's appointment and listened so intently to the baby's heartbeat that they almost felt like they'd become my own. I'd seen our daughter on a screen three times, moving and kicking.

But I still couldn't believe it was real and actually happening. That we'd have a baby in our arms soon. And at that moment in the bathtub, the concept of "soon" took on an entirely different meaning. I didn't know how each hour could stretch into something that felt like a full day.

We got out of the bath, and I asked her what she wanted to wear. She grabbed the t-shirt I'd been sleeping in that was hanging on the hook in our bathroom and pulled it over her body, letting the material stretch over her stomach. I helped her into clean underwear, and got her back into bed. I brushed her hair and listened as her breathing evened out.

We did manage to doze between contractions until about five o'clock in the morning. I was walking with Emily to the bathroom when her water broke. Not a trickle, but a gush of clear liquid that her underwear was no match for.

" _We're going to beat the majority of the commute into DC,"_ I thought to myself in relief.

I called Dr. Craig's service to let them know we were heading to the hospital. I called my mother and woke her up. Fran Morgan was out of her apartment, down the stairs, across the driveway and into our house before I'd barely set my phone down. For all her speed, she was calm when she got to our bedroom. Emily was wearily laying in bed at that point, new underwear on and wearing a pad, blankets pulled over her waist and my old, soft, worn FBI Academy t-shirt clinging to her slightly sweaty body.

I was re-checking our bags for the hospital, dressed and ready to go, just needing to get Emily into a pair of her maternity pants when my mom sat on the bed next to her. That didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was when she laid down next to Emily and put her arm around her.

"The next few hours are going to be some of the most excruciatingly painful of your life, but I promise you, Emily, that when that baby comes into the world, you won't feel or even remember the pain. So you hang in there and hold onto that," my mom whispered in Emily's ear.

I saw Emily nod. I watched her touch my mother's hand and let my mother comfort her through yet another contraction. When it was over, Emily kissed my mother's cheek and whispered, "I love you, Fran."

My mom smiled. "I love you like you were my own daughter. I have since I found you sleeping next to Derek in his hospital bed over a year ago, before we really even talked. You brought peace to my son's face like I hadn't seen since he was a young boy."

That statement seemed to bring renewed strength to Emily. She kissed my mother's cheek again and sat up in bed. She reached for the pants that were dangling uselessly in my hands while I watched the whole beautiful spectacle before me. I'd been watching and memorizing Emily with her father for months, but I hadn't been paying enough attention to the relationship my own mother had developed with her.

Emily pulled on her pants and slipped on the flip flops I put at her feet. I handed her one of my fleece zip-up sweatshirts in case it was chilly outside. I grabbed our bag and a towel for the seat of my car and we slowly headed downstairs.

My mother assured us that she and Chris would take care of Leon.

I reminded her to not make the drive into DC on her own. My mother was fine driving around the quiet streets of Alexandria, but she didn't feel comfortable dealing with the city, and Chris didn't even have a license. We'd set it up weeks ago, that when the time came, Penelope would come and get everyone and drive them to the hospital, with Will serving as our back-up if the BAU was in the middle of a case.

It was still dark out, only the murky light of pre-dawn and streetlights guiding our way towards the hospital. There were cars on the freeway, but traffic was flowing. Emily was quiet, except for moaning through two more contractions that came about twelve minutes apart. _Fix You_ by Coldplay came on the radio as I was pulling into the parking structure at Sibley Memorial Hospital. I'm not sure why I took notice of that, but I couldn't help relating my relationship with Emily to the words.

Everything moved fast and slow at the same time. Getting into the maternity ward and into a birthing suite was fast since we'd already filled out all of our paperwork in advance. Getting Emily set up to the fetal monitor seemed incredibly slow. For some reason, she shook her head when the nurse handed her a hospital gown. She had a quiet showdown with the nurse, her lips set firmly, refusing to take the hospital gown in her own hand. She seemed far away when she willingly pulled off her underwear and got on the bed, not really caring who was there, but she wasn't letting go of my shirt.

"It smells like you," she whispered to me as she pulled up the shirt so the monitor could be strapped around her.

Well, okay then. The shirt was staying on and if the hospital staff didn't like it, they could try to go through me and fail.

A doctor came in and examined Emily. He informed us that she was four centimeters dilated and we could expect the contractions to start coming faster. He told us that Dr. Craig would be here soon. He asked Emily if she wanted an epidural and I cringed while she shook her head, declining the drugs that could ease her discomfort.

"Em, you don't have to do it like this. It's not a sign of weakness to take the drugs," I said.

"I'm not doing it because of that. I want to feel and remember everything," she said.

It all blurred for me after that. Dr. Craig arrived. The clock ceased to have any meaning. There was me and Emily and her contractions and our baby's heartbeat. There were ice chips and endless minutes I spent brushing Emily's hair, which was the one thing she seemed to find comfort in. The bathtub in the birthing suite was out since her water had broken, but there was a shower with a hand-held massage head. I couldn't begin to recall the minutes we spent in that shower over the course of the day, me in my swim trunks, Emily's arms around my neck, while I used that massager on her lower back.

I made phone calls to keep our family in the loop. I quietly ate a sandwich out in the hallway, inhaling it between Emily's contractions when they were about five minutes apart.

And at four o'clock in the afternoon, eleven hours after her water broke, I got to call my mother and Penelope and tell them the show was really on the road now. Emily was fully dilated and ready to push, and they could head towards the hospital soon.

The clock comes back into focus for me now, at six o'clock, when we've been at this pushing for two hours. Twenty hours of labor is really nothing, from what I've read online. Nothing, but everything, and endless and excruciating. There have been no complications, no stalling of this labor, nothing out of the ordinary at all, and for that I'm thankful.

But I'm losing Emily in a haze of blinding pain, and I can't get her to focus on me or herself or pushing anymore. My t-shirt is a sweaty mess bunched up over her stomach, and only really serving to cover her breasts. Her hair is slick with sweat at the scalp, her cheeks are red and she's breathing heavily. Dr. Craig is looking at me, telling me to get her pushing again, and I'm at a loss, because the words I never thought I'd hear from Emily's lips just came out in a whimper.

"I can't," she said a few seconds ago, her head slumping back against the bed with tears rolling down her cheeks.

I could be like every father in a delivery room I've ever seen on TV. I could grab her hands and squeeze her fingers and assure her with a firm voice that she, indeed, can keep pushing, but I know that's not how I'm going to reach her. Because I know her, and we are people who are reached with meaningful stories and heartfelt words, despite the decades we lived before we found each other pretending that wasn't true.

I don't know where my move comes from. I'm operating on instinct and how much I know the woman whom I love with my whole heart laying there in the bed. I get my knee on the side of the bed near her armpit. I carefully hoist my other leg over her torso, above her belly, not putting any pressure on her, and let that knee settle on the opposite side of the bed. Now we're face to face, and she has nowhere to look but at me.

I put my hands on her cheeks and kiss her lips. "This baby was conceived on January sixth, but I wasn't even home, Em. That's how I think I knew from the beginning that we were having a girl, because boy sperm swims faster, but girl sperm lives longer, up to five days. It was January third. You took me to the morning football game. Baltimore Ravens vs. the Chicago Bears. We gorged ourselves on garlic fries. It was the first football game you'd ever attended, and you had a smile on your face the whole time. After the game, we took a detour to Annapolis to check on the boat. Do you remember?"

Her eyes are on me again, and she's hearing me. She nods.

"We went inside the cabin and you smiled at me while you made the bench seating into a bed. And it was there, in the cabin of our sailboat that was docked in a slip in Annapolis, on a freezing cold January afternoon that our daughter first started. Because the next morning, I was called away on a case, and I didn't come home until late on January seventh. Remember?"

Again Emily nods.

"That's what I believe. She was always meant to be conceived on a boat and she was meant to be born today with the harvest moon in the sky. Do you believe that?"

"Yes," she whispers, reaching up to wipe the tears on her cheeks.

"She's ready to meet us now, so you have to push, Em. And you can. I know you can. You're the strongest person I know."

She nods again, more firmly, and I remove my hands from her face and get off her body. I stand beside her, linking my fingers with one of her hands and keeping my other arm around her shoulder, and when the next contraction come, Emily pushes harder than she had been. She screams and pushes and buries her face in my neck.

It goes on for what feels like forever, her contractions one on top of the other it seems, and the room seems so noisy, but also feels silent when Dr. Craig says, "There's the head."

I can't help myself. I step forward just a bit so I can catch a glimpse of our daughter's head, which is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, with dark curly hair, even if it's matted with bodily fluids. I nod at Emily and move to stand beside her again. "Here she is. Push, Em," I whisper in her ear.

And Emily does. She pushes and screams as our baby moves out of her body, and then we are in a suspension of silence so complete for a few seconds as Emily's tired body slumps against me that I think something is wrong.

But there's nothing wrong at all. For once, we are in a hospital and absolutely everything is right.

There's a baby girl in Dr. Craig's arms and a cry that slices through the silence in the room, and then there's a baby on Emily's chest, right on my Academy t-shirt that I'd hung onto for well over a decade that will never be the same again because our baby and is there on it, crying and covering it with blood that probably won't ever come out.

I don't care, because I'm crying, too. And Emily is crying and laughing and her hands are on our daughter. There are other hands there, too. Dr. Craig's. She's turned our baby slightly on her side and is clamping the umbilical cord and trying to hand me a pair of scissors to me.

I take them, feeling like my hands belong to someone else. I cut the cord and think, "How can two people even make something like this?"

At least I think the words are in my mind, but Dr. Craig laughs lightly. "I've been doing this for years, but I always wonder the same thing."

A nurse is there, wiping down the skin of our daughter, but not taking her from Emily's arms yet, and I think I'm experiencing some moderate form of shock. I count toes and fingers. I count the wet clumps of lashes on Emily's eyes. I bend my head to kiss Emily's sweaty forehead, and I'm not sure if we murmur "I love you," to each other one time or a thousand times.

Silence descends on the room again, because our baby has stopped crying. She's staring with eyes that won't focus on Emily's tear-filled but smiling face, blinking with a look that I can only describe as, "What the hell just happened?"

Cordelia Frances Morgan.

Cordelia means _from the heart_ , and _jewel of the sea._ It's unique and old-fashioned and has many nicknames. Lia is too close to Leon, and neither of us liked Delia or Cory. But we liked another nickname born of Cordelia, one of those nicknames where you don't quite know how it derived.

I get my face next to Emily's, so that my cheek is against hers and look into our daughter's eyes. It's impossible to know exactly who she looks like at this moment, but even without discernible features that can be assigned to either of us, it's impossible to think she's anything other than ours.

I run my finger down her soft cheek that is ivory with just a hint of mocha behind it. "Hi Rory," I whisper.

A nurse comes to take the baby to weigh her and Dr. Craig is still between Emily's legs, and that's when I completely lose my shit after hanging on for Emily for all these hours. I wrap my arms around her and I sob uncontrollably, not even able to find the words, because _Thank you_ and _I love you_ isn't enough.

She hugs me back and I feel her lips on my cheek. "I know," she whispers in my ear.

And then she nudges me slightly. A nurse is there with Rory in her arms, now wrapped in a blanket with a pink cap on her head. I take her. I hold my daughter for the first time, and my heart isn't even something I recognize anymore. It feels strange inside me. I never thought I'd have this.

"That's what I fantasized about," Emily says with a tired voice.

I look at her and raise my eyebrows.

"When I decided I wanted to try and get pregnant, this was the best part of what I imagined, how you would look when you connected with our child for the first time. It's better than anything I ever dreamed."


	22. Chapter 22

_October 23, 2016_

Of all the books Clyde Easter left me, the most confusing was _A Path with Heart,_ which is a guide to spirituality and Buddhism. It wasn't just the fact that Clyde Easter very simply only believed in the Ism of Clyde and nothing else; it was because it was the only book without any personal notes to me in the margins.

The mystery of the missing notes was cleared up when I first picked up that book when we got home from the hospital with Rory; upon closer inspection, the binding had been broken and resealed. When I peeled it apart, I found a piece of paper that had been folded accordion style. On the paper was a list of names - criminals and shady people Clyde had made deals with over the years. People who could get me identities or anything else. On the top of the page, in Clyde's handwriting, was a simple message: _Just in case, Em. But I hope you won't ever need it._

I handed the paper to Derek, who glanced at it and then put it in our safe. We didn't talk about it. We weren't planning to need it ever, but we weren't willing to throw it away.

The real mystery in all of this, though, was why I sought out that book at all. Derek looked at me curiously when he was sitting on the couch and holding Rory. I picked it up because I've been having a recurring dream I can't understand.

I've been dreaming about my abortion. Not the procedure itself. Not Matthew and me on a rickety bus heading to a seedier part of Rome. Not the run-down building and a doctor who scared the ever loving crap out of me. Not the dirty walls, but the surprisingly and thankfully clean table. Not Matty holding my hand through the whole thing, and not sleeping with my head on his shoulder on the bus ride home after it was over. I don't dream about that night, when my mother was away, and how Matthew snuck into my house and into my bedroom so the maid wouldn't see him, how he laid next to me all night and held my hand while I alternated between sleeping and sobbing.

What I've been dreaming about is a bright room, and me at the age of fifteen on a table. I can't see Matty or the doctor, but I can hear his voice saying gruffly, "We're done."

And then I see something floating above me, a shifting and flowing small light above my head that transforms into the face of Rory. "I knew we'd find each other again," the face of my baby says in a sing song voice.

I startle awake from these dreams with my heart pounding. It's not an entirely unpleasant dream, just a confusing one, and I don't understand why my subconscious is melding the fetus I aborted with the daughter that is here right now. My initial thought was residual guilt, but it doesn't feel like that. I don't feel guilty, just disoriented when I wake up.

I had the dream for the first time just about an hour after I had Rory. Penelope was on her way with Fran, my dad and Leon, and I was holding Rory in my arms. She was nursing for the first time, which was not a feeling I was going to get complacent with any time soon. It was emotionally overwhelming, that my body had made her, that my body could feed her, that she was ours at all.

Derek had his hip propped up on the hospital bed, with his head on my shoulder, watching Rory. Her skin was against mine, and Derek's warm breath washed over me, and I found I could barely keep my eyes open.

I felt Derek put his arm under mine, to help hold Rory to me. "Sleep, Em," he whispered to me.

And I did, though not for long. I must have started dreaming nearly instantly, because it was only fifteen minutes later when I startled awake from my confusing vision, and seconds later, JJ was standing in the doorway of the hospital room with a shy smile on her face.

"I'm going to call this the eighth wonder of the world," she said.

I grinned and Derek laughed lightly, and I forgot my dream for the time being. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Penelope headed to Alexandria to pick up everyone, and I headed here. I couldn't help myself. It's okay, isn't it? I know you probably want Fran and Leon and Chris to see her first. I got in my car to drive home, and ended up here instead," JJ rambled.

I smiled wider. "JJ, it's totally fine. Completely. We're glad you're here. Come meet Rory. Cordelia."

JJ stepped closer as Derek stood from his perch on my bed. "If Penelope asks, I was never here. If she knows I got my hands on this baby first, she will kill me. And I'm not even exaggerating very much."

Even as she spoke, she was taking Rory from my arms and gathering the blanket around her as she did so. Before she spoke another word, tears were in her eyes and dripping down her face. "I just can't believe it," she whispered. "None of us really can." She laughed lightly. "Hi, Rory. We are going to spoil you so much."

JJ stayed for only about fifteen minutes. She left with a kiss on my cheek and a hug for Derek as soon as Derek said, "Penelope just texted that they're on their way in."

JJ was out the door with an ominous "I was never here" that made me laugh again.

Penelope came into the room with Fran and Leon shortly after, explaining that my father was giving them a chance first. Awe seemed to be the main emotion everyone was feeling. I was feeling it, too, but it was so muddled with exhaustion I couldn't totally focus on it.

Leon held his baby sister first, sitting in a chair while Derek supported his arms, looking between her face and mine, and smiling the whole time. Penelope held her next, and she cried and kissed baby cheeks and kept shaking her head.

Fran hung on to her emotions until Rory was in her arms. She squeezed my hand while Leon and Penelope held her. She hugged her son. But when Cordelia was in her arms and we told her that her middle name was Frances, Fran Morgan lost it in a sea of tears and laughter.

It was at that moment that I became fully thankful that I was going to be providing Rory with her main source of nourishment for several months, because I wasn't quite sure I'd get to hold her very much otherwise.

I'd watched JJ, Leon, Fran and Penelope hold Rory with a slightly detached air, not because it wasn't emotional, but because it was almost too much. For a woman who wanted her personal life to slide under the radar of anyone who knew me for so many years, bringing Rory into the world overwhelmed me. The love overwhelmed me; the love for me and Derek, and the instantaneous love for the little baby who'd only been in this world for a couple of hours.

Or maybe I was just waiting. Maybe it was that I couldn't focus too much on what was going on in my hospital room at first because I wasn't yet seeing what I was holding out for. That came a little later. It came after Leon hugged me and kissed my cheek and told me he loved me. It came after Derek, Penelope and Fran took him down to the cafeteria for a treat. It came when a man with a walker emerged in the room a few minutes later, with tears already in his eyes.

For months before his heart attack, I saw my father as frail, and I saw him as even more frail after his heart attack - slightly stooped with shuffling feet and hands that still shook. I'm not sure what monumental effort it took him, or if it wasn't an effort at all. Perhaps he'd just been storing every ounce of his energy and strength for that moment.

Because when he got into the room and approached the bed, he stood up straighter than I'd seen him stand since I was a teenager. His hands didn't shake at all, and his arms looked sturdy and strong. I transferred the baby to his waiting arms and didn't have any fear that he couldn't balance or hold her steady while standing.

"Cordelia," I whispered.

He sobbed and nodded and looked at her face. She was awake and looking right at him, and I think that image will forever be ingrained in my mind. But not as much as the next image, as my father walked on steady and sure legs to the window, to hold his granddaughter in the light of the harvest moon.

He spoke softly at first.

 _I've tried the new moon tilted in the air  
Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster  
As you might try a jewel in your hair.  
I've tried it fine with little breadth of luster,  
Alone, or in one ornament combining  
With one first-water start almost shining._

I smiled through my tears. I recited Robert Frost's poem with him. I'd heard it many times as a child and hadn't forgotten a word.

 _I put it shining anywhere I please.  
By walking slowly on some evening later,  
I've pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,  
And brought it over glossy water, greater,  
And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,  
The color run, all sorts of wonder follow._

My father turned from the window and smiled at me, the tears still cascading down his face. "I said that poem to you right after you were born, too."

I nodded and wiped my face. "I love you," I whispered to him…

Four weeks later, and I'm stunned by how much life can change and stay the same.

Rory, with her heart-shaped lips and her wide brown eyes stuns me every time I look at her. Rory, with her soft cafe-au-lait skin and pink cheeks that fill out daily. Rory, whose features don't really belong to either me or Derek, but seem a combination of both of us. Rory, who cries very little - I'm not sure if that's her disposition or the fact that she's very rarely not being cuddled and loved. I can't believe we made her; I never thought I could make something so completely perfect.

My cheeks are still rounded, too. And they have more color in them than I've ever seen before. I'm eating for breastfeeding, slowly losing the baby weight, not in too much of a hurry because Derek seems as infatuated with my body as he was before I was pregnant, despite the obvious changes - the looser skin and the larger breasts and a little more meat on my bones. Not that we can do anything about his infatuation at the moment physically, but he stares at me when I get out of the shower in the mornings and his eyes are delighted. That's the best adjective I have. He delights in me.

Leon adores Rory. Every afternoon, Derek walks to the school at the end of the day, and Leon wants to jog home, to get there faster, so he can hold his baby sister.

My father, who used to stay in his cabin most of the day, who was receptive of visitors, but only ventured over to the main house for dinner, can often be found at our kitchen table in the early mornings. He drinks coffee with Fran and they take turns holding Rory while they eat breakfast with Leon.

The house has a steady stream of visitors during the day and evenings; not just the team, but neighbors. I'm not used to so many people so constantly in my personal space, but I, at first, became used to it, and then came to love it. I love that Fran always has a fresh batch of cookies and baked goods ready for visitors, that our coffee pot is percolating at regular intervals throughout the day, and that our family is so unique and so big and so loving.

My mother stops by sometimes. She doesn't quite know what to make of our lives that are so full of spontaneity, lacking schedule, but bursting in love and warmth. She tries, and I smile at her for her efforts. I hug her hello and goodbye every time she visits. We're getting used to hugs.

My forty-sixth birthday came and went with a quiet family celebration. "I promised to rock your world on this birthday," Derek whispered to me that night.

"You still think you're not?" I asked him with a light laugh. I kissed him then. I wanted to do more than just kiss him, but he's firmly locked himself in the confines of chastity until I can join him, so I didn't let my hands wander. "I was pretty pregnant during your birthday, and I can't do much at all right now, so we'll just wait a bit. We'll wait, and then we'll celebrate together in a few weeks."

The constant here is me and Derek. Our lives have altered but we are the unchanged foundation I find the most comfort in when anything else might be feeling too new or too overwhelming. We're altered with Rory, but the things that connect us are only stronger now. I slip deeper into love with him every day, and I sometimes wonder if anyone in the history of the universe has loved someone as much as I love him. It's a question I don't pose aloud, but I ponder it. Daily.

He works about four hours a day for the Department of Justice - enough to keep him busy and engaged, but not enough to make waking up with me in the middle of the night each time Rory cries a hardship.

I would be difficult to pick just one thing that's my favorite of all of the changes since Rory came into our lives, but I think the nights are what I'd choose. Because when Rory wakes up in the middle of the night and I go to get her from the cradle in our room, Derek is awake and waiting for me. He rarely wears a shirt to bed, and I'll lay on my side to breastfeed Rory, with Derek at my back, his skin pressed against mine. He touches my shoulders or hips and kisses my neck, and when Rory's mouth slackens around my nipple and I'm half asleep, I'm just aware enough. I'm aware when Derek takes her from me and lays her on the strong, comforting expanse of his chest. I often roll over to watch him as he rubs her back and burps her, while her cheek is pressed against his skin.

It's with half-open eyes that I watch him change her and get her back into the bassinet. Those same eyes track him as he gets back in bed and wraps his arms around me. He brushes his lips over my eyes so they close fully. "Sleep," he whispers to me.

And I do, but still I dream. The dream of that bright burst of light above me after my abortion when I was fifteen years old. The dream that is hard to shake despite how absolutely phenomenal our days are.

This afternoon, Derek is at work, Leon is at school and Fran is at the library. I'm sitting in my father's cabin. He has Rory in his arms while sitting in the armchair nearest the window. I'm sitting across from him on the couch, _A Path with Heart_ in my hands, still searching for something. An answer or anything to grasp onto.

"You've been reading that for weeks now," he says curiously.

I nod and smile at him. "I can't get in more than a few pages each day. It's like Grand Central Station at the house."

"Why are you reading it?" he asks.

I put the book in my lap and look at my father. We've become friends, I realize. And though this conversation might be more appropriate with Derek or JJ or Penelope, I consider my father and take a deep breath. I don't want him to feel guilty, but we've both left guilt behind months ago, and I decide to count on that. "Do you believe in any religion?" I ask him.

I watch as he shifts Rory from his arms to his thighs, so she's laying on her back and facing him. Her sleeping face is turned towards me. He sighs. "My parents dragged me to a Methodist church every Sunday when I was growing up, but they never really believed. They were doing it because it was the right thing to do, for the neighbors and their country club friends. I didn't really believe in anything growing up. I converted to Catholicism for your mother, but that was perfunctory. I didn't believe in a lot of that, either. I liked the fantasy of it, but not the guilt. Mortal sins shouldn't be so easily forgiven, and good living shouldn't have so many rules, in my book."

I look at him there with my daughter in his lap and release a deep breath. "I don't know what I believe. But, Daddy, you know how Mom was about church. I went every Sunday with her after you left. We were in Rome." I take in a shuddering gulp of air. "About five months after you left, I discovered I was pregnant."

My father's eyes land on me, and they aren't eyes of judgement. They are eyes of understanding and deep sadness.

I blink back tears and continue. "I had an abortion. It haunted me for a lot of years after, and then I pushed it into the recesses of my mind. But since I had Rory, I've been dreaming about it. Not the procedure itself, but of laying on that table at a shabby clinic in Rome and seeing a light above me. And then that light shifts and it's Rory's face, telling me we'd found each other again."

My father stares at me. I've become so used to his quiet tears that when one falls from his eye and traces a path down the wrinkles in his face, I am a GPS unit, knowing exactly where it's going to turn next on the terrain of his skin.

He clears his throat. Keeping one hand on Rory's chest, he wipes his cheek with his other hand. He doesn't apologize and guilt isn't predominant. We've let go of guilt over the course of the past several months. Our pasts are our pasts. But he does apologize. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. When?" he asks.

"January 20, 1986," I respond softly and quickly. I'll never really forget that date.

"I'm sorry," he says again. "But you're not going to find what you need in that book. Buddhists believe that we reincarnate, but they don't believe in an eternal soul. They wouldn't look at your dream and find context for it."

I consider that statement. "What do you believe?" I ask after several beats of my heart.

My father looks at Rory. "I believe our pasts never leave us, even when we think we've let them go, and that people are always on the path of getting it right, even when they get horribly off track. I believe that we have to find a balance between trying to get it right and just being happy, and you found that balance. I'd like to believe that when I'm gone, I'll get a second chance to come back and do it right. I believe you figured it out decades earlier than me, and that you're a quite a bit better than I was at life. I believe Leon and Rory are going to be even better at it. At life. I believe our universe is an expanse of coincidence, or knowing enough to find the coincidences."

I turn his words over in my mind. They aren't answers, but they're better than what I've found so far. "What do you mean about coincidences?"

And then my father, who has a mind that is much like Reid's, but the heart of dreamer, gives me something I won't find in any book about souls or religion. He gives me a tangible coincidence that I can perhaps clasp onto.

"January 20, 1986. Voyager 2 discovered a new moon, the closest moon to Uranus."

I raise my eyebrows at him, not totally finding the connection.

My father smiles at me. "That moon was eventually named. Guess what it is."

He looks at Rory and I look at her. "Cordelia," I whisper.

And he nods.


	23. Chapter 23

_November 19, 2016_

Fall swooped into the DC area quickly this year. Or maybe it was just the first time I ever really had the hours in the day to notice and appreciate it. I'd lived in apartments for decades, and spent one year in a house where I hired a gardening service because I had no time to take care of things like weeds and fallen leaves.

In this house with Emily, with me only working part time and her on maternity leave, we'd taken care of the expanse of yard ourselves. We'd wrap Rory up in blankets and put her in her stroller on the back deck and rake the massive amount of leaves that dropped from the old trees in our backyard. With our baby sleeping and Leon at school and my mother off on some errand and Chris doing whatever it was he did in his cabin for endless hours, Emily and I would rake leaves. Inevitably one of us would throw some leaves at the other, and we'd end up in huge pile of brittle brown and orange foliage, kissing and laughing and creating more work for ourselves that neither of us minded.

I loved Emily in jeans and fall sweaters or one of my sweatshirts. I loved how most days of her maternity leave she wore no makeup except mascara, if that. I loved how her cheeks would tinge pink from exertion while we dealt with the three acres of property we owned, and how she would laugh. God, how I loved the way she laughed so much now.

I thought I'd known her laugh before - before when she worked with me, and before, when we found each other again. But it's different now. It's freer and lighter and more regular and ever-present. I hear her laughing with a couple of the neighborhood moms who frequently stop by during the day. I hear her laughing with my mother and her father, and even her mother. She laughs in a good-natured way with team when they stop by, and she laughs with Leon, when he shares stories with her about his days at school.

Maybe it's because of Emily's laughter - laughter that often erupts when she's holding our baby in her arms - or maybe it's because Rory's destined to be a little more in tune with happiness and her surroundings, but a few weeks ago, when she was just shy of six weeks old, Rory started giving us genuine smiles. At first we brushed them off as instinct, but it became apparent very quickly that Rory smiled at us when we smiled at her; there was nothing involuntary about it.

I loved those smiles slightly more than Emily's laughter. I loved them because Rory's brown eyes would sparkle and she looked just like Emily when she smiled. Her skin is a little darker than Emily's and might get darker, and I think her nose is mine, and the arch of her eyebrows. The black curly hair is definitely mine. The lips are Emily's. That's become more evident in the past few weeks. But the eyes are a mystery. We both have dark brown eyes. When Rory is seriously contemplating a face, she looks a lot like me. But when she smiles, she looks exactly like Emily. And as her eyelashes continue to grow and fill out, I think she'll look more like her mother.

I've spent several weeks contemplating how different types of love can be equal. I love Leon and Rory quite differently. I know people like to say people can love their adopted children the same way they love their biological children, but I don't believe that. It's equal in its beauty, but different in its roots. I'm not sure if that would have been the case if we adopted Leon if he was an infant. In fact, I'm sure it wouldn't be. But he was eight when we got him, and he makes my heart sing at the same volume as Rory does, but in a different tune.

Leon is my bright light every weekday morning when he barrels down the stairs, excited about a new day in front of him with no fear in his heart and no sadness or guilt on his mind. He is my heartsong every afternoon at 3:00pm when he comes out of his third grade classroom with a smile on his face and wants to run home to see Emily and his baby sister, and his Nana and Grandpa. Leon is the little boy who wants to read stories before bed in our bed at night now, instead of his. He wants us all together, me and Emily and Rory with him, before we send him off to bed every night.

Whatever demons I lived with for decades, we've helped eradicate for Leon in just a little over seven months. It's not that he'll ever totally forget, but he lives free and clear of the darkness that could threaten to overwhelm him or change his life's path. However odd it might seem, his love of his new life with us is the foundation that holds us together in a lot of ways, the tangible proof that love and honesty and holding nothing back is the path to a bright future.

And Rory. Let me just say I'm very thankful that Emily doesn't find it in any way creepy how I could sit and watch her breastfeed Rory every second of every day. Every time Emily is feeding Rory, I pause and watch, at least for a few seconds, because I can't get over it - that it's Emily, that it's Emily with a baby, that that baby is ours. Sometimes I take an extra shower in the evenings just so I can have a few minutes of quiet to ponder how exactly this all happened and how I was the lucky bastard who got to be right here, right now.

Rory is little hands that clasp onto my fingers. Rory is bright toothless smiles whenever I smile at her. Rory is ten pink toes and chubby knees and skin so soft it's almost impossible to believe it's real.

The first night we were home with her from the hospital, I was tired; not nearly as tired as Emily, but sufficiently exhausted. I took a shower and pulled on sweatpants, but collapsed into bed without putting on a shirt. Emily was nearly delirious with exhaustion the first time Rory woke up in the middle of the night the first night we were home, so I brought the baby to her. I laid on my side, my head propped up on my elbow and left hand, and looked over Emily's shoulder while she fed our baby.

"Can you burp her and change her?" Emily asked softly when Rory had stopped eating.

"Of course," I said. "Let me just put on a shirt."

Emily had turned to look at me, her eyes both a mixture of confusion and empathy. "Derek," she sighed. "Skin to skin contact is as important for me and her as it is for you and her. You're her father. The smell of you and the feel of you is vital and perfectly innocent."

It was in that moment that I realized that maybe I had a few residual issues within me that I hadn't dealt with yet. That right and wrong had blurred inside me and I didn't quite know where the lines were drawn. But I took my daughter in my arms that night and laid her body on my chest. I patted my hand gently on her back, and her cheek melded with my skin chest and her little hands were against me, and I learned. I learned that love for me didn't have to be altered because of my past. I remembered that I knew right and wrong in my heart, and this felt absolutely right and it was okay.

I held Rory against me and Emily laid her head on my shoulder with her hand on my stomach. "See?" she whispered softly. "She knows her daddy. You would never hurt her. Ever. Don't second guess yourself. Just do what feels right."

So I did. I slept shirtless most nights and Emily fed Rory and I held her against my skin after, burping her and changing her and getting her back into her bassinet.

It was three weeks ago in that situation, when Emily was blearily laying next to me and I was burping Rory, that I realized her eyes were wide open. I adjusted her slightly on my chest so I could see her face, and I smiled.

She smiled back at me for the first time. And she looked so much like Emily that it took my breath away.

In the middle of all of that, we raked and cleaned up our yard. We helped Leon with homework and found him keeping pace with his peers. We grew as a family. We celebrated Halloween with a decorated house and Leon dressed as a Storm Trooper thanks to Penelope. Our evenings were fires in the fireplace and visits from friends and, more often than not, Henry and Leon running through the house while JJ and Will were over and baby Zachary, who could now roll and crawl and pull up, thinking that Rory was a toy he very much wanted to play with.

As fall came, and then slowly started merging towards winter, it was spring in our house. As the leaves fell and everything living outside the walls of warm homes got prepared for cold days and hibernation, we were growing in ways I never imagined for myself.

Emily was slightly changed. It wasn't an alarming or concerning change; it was simply that her contentment with life looked different than it did on my face. My past rushed up on me and was thrown out like a red carpet over a year ago - a red carpet I had to deal with. Her hurts and sadness were more reserved. They came out like raindrops on a misty day, one little blip at a time, and there was no way to know exactly when something would come up for her.

She told me about her dreams, and her conversation with her father and I didn't know quite what to think or believe. She was okay with that. She didn't quite know what to believe either. The one thing we could agree upon was that in all of the coincidences that lead us to this impossibly perfect point in our lives was the biggest coincidence, the one that started it all, was that in August of 2015, I was kidnapped, and my picture miraculously landed in her hands.

A few mornings ago, after I'd had ample time to think about faith and love and the universe, when Emily stepped out of the shower, I wrapped my arms around her. "My altar is Sunday mornings with all of us in pajamas watching football. My prayers are answered every day when I take in the sight of our family. My beliefs rest in the smiles of you and Rory and Leon. In my heart, everything is right and as it should be, and I want to write our own book, complete with unconditional love and happiness."

I watched her face in the mirror, how she smiled softly. I watched and felt her arms come around me. Her wet hair brushed a landscape across my chest as she nodded her head. "I love you," she whispered.

Discussing coincidence or miracle beyond our reality was a moot point. The odds were so slim from the beginning, Emily and me, and then Leon, and especially Rory - we'd all been damn lucky to end up here. What we agreed on deeply and wholly was that we should appreciate every moment.

Our pasts were so different - it was like we were two freeways coming at this point in our lives from different directions and we entered a merge ramp at the same time - a ramp that would shoot us off into a different direction together. But the paths to that merge ramp had their own, individual twists and turns. It had taken us a long time to get here.

And now, here we were.

A couple weeks ago, Emily had gone in for a follow-up appointment with Dr. Craig. She'd gotten a new IUD and an "All systems go," seal of approval.

"All systems go," took on an entirely new meaning with an infant in the house, sleeping in our room. The first night with her new IUD, she didn't feel particularly well and was experiencing cramps. After that, it was back to the quiet, soft sex we'd experienced during her pregnancy. It was no secret to either of us that we were both holding out for the moment we could have a little more, when the stars were in line and we had the opportunity.

Whatever road we were on together didn't give us that opportunity for nearly two more weeks - today - a few days before Thanksgiving, nearly a year since Emily had gotten that negative HIV status and I felt our lives had really begun together.

This afternoon, I spent a few hours at JJ and Will's house. They needed a new kitchen sink and garbage disposal, and I'd volunteered to come help install both. Leon came with me, with the plan that he would spend the night - his first sleepover.

Will had run to the hardware store for some more caulking and Zachary was napping. Leon and Henry were playing a game in the living room, and it was JJ who sat on the kitchen floor beside me while I was under the sink.

"Was it hard to leave?" she asks randomly, with a shaky voice.

I still the movement of the wrench in my hand and scoot out from under the sink, so that I'm sitting up and facing her. Her tears are barely being held at bay. I reach out and touch her arm. "Yes. It still is in some ways. The first couple of months, when Penelope would tell me you were on a case, I would pester her for updates constantly throughout the day. It wasn't hard to give up the job, but it was hard to give you all up. I was worried about you without me there."

JJ nods and her eyes well up. "I want to be home every night for dinner. I want to be here for sleepovers. I'm sitting here right now and resenting my cell phone, that at any moment a call could come through and I'd have to leave all of this. Sometimes I'd get tired of it, and sometimes I'd be disappointed, but I never used to resent being called away. I don't know what to do."

I reach out and wrap my arms around her. I've known JJ for over a decade. She's like a sister to me. The part of me who had been gone from the BAU for so many months wants to tell her to just walk away and find a job where she can get what she wants in life. But I know it isn't that easy. The BAU is almost dysfunctional in all of its function - an elite team with an unbelievable arrest record, but we aren't very good to ourselves on a personal level - there simply isn't time for both.

JJ wraps her arms around me and rests her head on my shoulder. "It would be easier, I think, if we all just made a pact together to walk away. With you gone, Penelope is barely hanging in there with the job. I caught her looking at other cyber-intelligence job offerings in the DC area the other day. If I leave, I think Reid would have one foot out the door. I'm not sure about Hotch and Rossi. I can't see them leaving."

She'd dyed her hair slightly darker the past couple of years, but it's back to the blonde I remembered from the beginning with her now. I run my hand over her hair and kiss her head. "I don't know exactly what to tell you. Part of me wants to tell you to just leave, to get on with your life and get what you want. But I know it's more difficult than that. What I can promise you is this: You won't ever lose any of us. You and Will and your kids are like family to us now in a different way than when we all worked together. I can also promise you that no one would resent or not understand your decision. We all get to choose our paths in life, free and clear of guilt. It took me a long time to learn that. And I _think_ that if you're at this point, actually doing it would be sad and gut-wrenching, but once you walk away, it will feel like a relief. You'll walk out of the FBI with tears in your eyes and your heart aching, and then you'll come home to Will and Zachary and Henry and that ache would go away. You'll remember every day why you did it, and it would be worth it."

She nods and sniffles and hugs me harder, but doesn't say anything.

"The whole team all lives in this slightly egotistical world that feels the only people who can solve the crimes we solve is us, but that's not true. There were people before us who solved those crimes and there will be people after us. And there are other ways to leave our footprints on the world, ways that work for us as we get older and our lives and feelings change, Jayje."

"I've been doing it for so long, I'm not sure what I look like with a different job and regular hours," she says against my shoulder. Her arms release me and she pulls back, wiping her eyes. "Thank you," she whispers.

We hear the front door open and she clears her throat. "I haven't talked about this with Will yet. I need to think," she says softly.

I nod and squeeze her hand quickly before getting back under the sink. She might need to think, but I can tell by her face that her decision has already been made. And I know there needs to be little discussion with Will; the man will be overjoyed when she talks to him about this.

I feel her stand and hear the sound of the bathroom door shutting from down the hall. I get back to tightening the bolt on the garbage disposal and think about those endless hours I spent on a plane with JJ over the years. Then I smile and think about endless hours in our future that could be spent having dinners together and our kids growing up together.

"How's it going? Will asks.

"Almost there," I say with a grin a he can't see.

We finish up a little later, caulking the edge of the sink and around the new faucet. I give Leon a hug goodbye with a bit of anxiety - I'm not sure how he'll do at night without us, but then I look at JJ who is smiling at me and holding Zachary in her arms. Leon will be absolutely fine.

It's nearly six o'clock, and I'm starving. After decades of irregular eating and sleeping patterns, my body runs on a schedule now, and my stomach knows that six o'clock means dinner. I can envision Emily and my mom in the kitchen, making dinner while Chris holds Rory. Which is why I'm completely surprised when I pull up and the house is dark. I can see just a faint light in the dining room. I look up and to the right and see the light on in my mother's apartment.

I open the front door, and there's a single battery-powered candle on the dining room table with a piece of paper under it.

 _Go take a shower if you need to. Call me when you're done.  
Emily_

I smile, wondering what she's up to, and already the anticipation of a few hours with just me and her makes my stomach flutter in excitement. I take the stairs two at a time and strip out of my clothes quickly.

I scrub some dried caulking from my fingers and make quick work of washing the rest of my body. I'm out of the shower in record time, with a towel wrapped around my waist. I reach for my phone on the bathroom counter and dial Emily.

"What are you wearing?" she asks, a sultry playfulness in her voice that I haven't heard in a quite a long time.

I grin. "A towel. Where are you?"

"Aren't you going to ask me what I'm wearing?" she asks.

Already good reason is leaving my mind as the blood that provides me with rational thought quickly rushes south. "What are you wearing?" I ask.

"Perhaps a little less than you, perhaps a little more. It's a judgement call you can make," she says in a whisper. "Are you hungry?"

"Very," I say in a gravelly voice, though food is the very last thing on my mind in that moment.

"Hmmm. I might be able to help you out with that. If you can find me." I can hear the smile in her voice before she disconnects her phone.

I laugh lightly, remembering a night nearly a year ago when I came home from work and found Emily sitting at the dining room table at the rowhouse in Georgetown, a veritable feast on the table and her naked in a chair, with only candlelight to guide my way towards her. I drop the towel on the bathroom floor and grab my robe from the hook, pulling it around my body and tying it quickly.

I take the stairs calmly and slowly. If she wants a little game of seduction, I can play along. I reach the landing on the first floor, fully expecting her to be sitting at our dining room table with food that materialized out of nowhere, but it's still dark downstairs. I look for a note in the kitchen or any sign that she'd been there, but there is none. A faint light outside the glass panes in the kitchen door catches my eye and I smile.

With the leaves gone from the trees in the backyard, I have nearly an unobstructed view of our dock and the water and our boat. I see the path of to dock littered with what looks like more battery operated candles, and I see a light inside the cabin of the boat.

I don't feel the cool ground as I open the kitchen door and step outside. I don't feel the chill in the air as I make my way onto our back decking and down the steps and hit the path that leads to the dock. Chris's cabin is dark as I walk past it, but there's an extension cord running from his house and down the path of the dock.

I'm practically running when I hit the dock, but slow down considerably before I reach the boat. I take a deep breath of the frigid air and smile again, remembering that as much as I might want to open the door of the boat cabin and grab the woman inside and get to dessert while skipping the main course, slow and steady will be better.

I get on the boat and open the door, and she's there. I take in the sights.

Back in January, when we conceived Rory, we made the unpleasant discovery that the heater on the boat was broken. We still hadn't fixed it, but the air is warm in the cabin of the boat due to the small space heater that's connected to the extension cord running under the door.

Back in January, our trip to the boat had been spontaneous. Emily had converted the bench seating into a bed and pulled out poly-cotton blend sheets that looked right out of the eighties from the little cabinet under one of the benches.

Back in January, it had been so cold and there weren't any blankets on the boat. We'd stripped off our clothing and then ended up putting our jackets back on, making love in a sea of blue-flowered sheets, skin and down coats.

But tonight, there's candlelight. The bench seating has been converted into a bed with soft pillows, warm flannel sheets and a comforter. There a little counter in the area near the stove, and Emily sits on one side of it. There's an empty stool waiting for me on the other side. There's champagne in a ice bucket and a fondue pot that's blocking my view of the top half of her. I can see the straps of a black bra on her shoulders, but that's about it. Her chin is in her hand and she's smiling lazily at me as she stirs a fondue stick in the bowl of warm cheese before her. She pulls the stick out and I can see the bread speared on the fork. She lets it cool for a second before popping the food in her mouth. She chews and blinks at me.

"Two minutes, twenty-two seconds," she says in sultry voice after she swallows. "Your investigative skills must be slipping. I expected you to find me and get here in under two minutes."

I grin and then laugh. I take the one step forward that brings me to the stool and sit down. Now that I'm closer and perched on the stool, I can see over the fondue pot. I catch a glimpse of the black lace of her bra and see far enough down to just make out the scrap of black lace that sits on her hips. I'm very near rendered speechless, and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to eat, just knowing the delights that are waiting for me, separated by about eighteen inches of formica countertop.

"Champagne?" she asks.

I nod. It's been a long time since we've shared a drink of anything alcoholic together. We don't keep alcohol in this house, and we didn't in the rowhouse after Chris came back into Emily's life. And then she was pregnant, and my weekend beers gave way to weekend family time with Leon. We didn't even have alcohol at our wedding, in deference to Chris.

She pours us each a glass and looks between me and the food. Oh, that's right. I'm supposed to be eating. I take a fondue stick in my hand, spear a piece of bread and dip it in the cheese. I clear my throat and find my voice. "Where is everyone?" I ask.

She smiles softly. "My father wanted to go spend a couple of days with Andrew. I drove him to the bus stop a few hours ago. Then I got this crazy idea and stopped at the store for some supplies. I set all of this up and then fed Rory and left her and one bottle of breast milk with your mother in her apartment for the evening. We have a few hours."

I nod, and realize that any seductive games I wanted to play with Emily are a distant memory in my mind. There's a predatory gleam in her eyes like nothing I've ever seen before, a look that both thrills me and unsettles me a little, just because it's so different.

We have a few hours, and she is the one orchestrating this; I don't have a prayer of keeping up. So I take a sip of champagne and spear another piece of bread. I'm going to need my strength and I really am starving. But I can hardly think at all, even enough to make my mouth cooperate in the act of chewing, when I look at her. I studiously avoid her gaze, but I can see the grin on her face spreading as I try to eat while attempting to cover the tent in the lap of my robe.

She laughs lightly and eats and drinks her champagne, and I'm wondering when she's going to release me from this purgatory where my only rational thought is consuming food until she's ready for the next phase the evening.

A few minutes later or an eternity - I'm not sure - she stands from the stool and moves until she's in front of me. The panties she's wearing are a wisp of lace that might as well not be there at all. For all the changes in her body since she had Rory, she's even more stunningly gorgeous to me now than she was before.

"Hungry?" she asks as she reaches under my robe and strokes me, barely containing her laughter.

"Starved," I say huskily while biting back a moan.

She laughs and gives it up and almost looks relieved to concede to the defeat of her own facade. She smiles, and she's just Emily again. My Emily, with love in her eyes and the predatory look gone. "I suck at this," she murmurs before she kisses me.

Maybe she does suck at the game of seduction, to a point. I don't care. It's her and me and I don't need games to keep our sex life from feeling mundane, because nothing could ever be mundane with her. Every time is different and impossible in its beauty, and it's ours.

I smile against her lips and run my fingers over her ribs, feeling goosebumps rise on her flesh. She makes short work of the knot on my robe and I stand as she pushes it off my shoulders. In this small space it's just a step between the stool at the counter and the bed she's made for us; I step towards it and she steps backwards like we're coordinating some sort of ballet, and then we tumble on the softness of the comforter.

Our kisses are hungry and there's candlelight dancing around the walls of the cabin in the boat. I'd missed surrounding her body with mine, with our stomachs flush and her breasts pressed against me. I'd missed it for months while her stomach was too big to accommodate that position. I'd gotten it back a couple of weeks before tonight, but not like this. That was darkness and silence and skin whispering over each other. This was different. It was different in more ways than just having light, and not having a baby sleeping in the room, and not having to be absolutely silent.

When we'd first gotten that negative HIV result a year ago, sex was passionate but still tinged with sadness and healing. And then sex became about getting pregnant, no matter what we said or did to convince ourselves that it wasn't just about that. Then she was pregnant and we had Leon and everything was careful and quiet. And now this. _This_ feels different.

As I gently skim the lace over her hips and down her legs and then just as gently removed her bra, I whisper, "Do you feel it?" in the valley of her breasts.

She doesn't ask me what I'm referring to. "Yes," she whispers, her hands on my head. "We have more than anything we could have imagined in life now, and no sadness."

I nod against her skin and move my body up to kiss her again. There aren't a lot of places to to roll on this narrow bed, but we manage. We kiss and smile at each other and touch each other with softness and reverence, rolling one way and back the other, for a long time, until we can't stand it anymore.

"Now," she moans, her lips slightly swollen from kissing, her fingers lightly trembling where they rest against my back.

I'm not about to argue, because I feel like I'm going to explode.

Emily really does explode. Without worrying about her making too much noise, I push into her fully and swiftly, and her orgasm shocks both of us. She screams out, "Derek. Fuck. Oh my God," and I feel her inner muscles gripping me and fluttering around me.

I grit my teeth and close my eyes, burying my face in her neck, waiting for her body to stop quivering. When it does, I whisper, "Don't move," in her ear. If she'd moved her hips at all, it would be all over for me, and I knew it.

It takes several more seconds for me to get myself under control. I take a deep breath and raise my face to look at her. She smiles softly at me. "Well, that was different," she says with a light chuckle.

I nod and smile at her before kissing her again. "You're breathtaking," I whisper as I start moving my hips.

We keep it slow. I last until our bodies are slick with sweat and sliding over each other. I last until she comes again, shouting my name and pulling me more firmly inside her, and then I snap, following right behind her.

We are a jumble of limbs in a small bed of flannel as the sweat slightly cools on our body. She's slightly propped up on pillows and my arms are around her waist, my cheek against the soft skin of her stomach. She has one hand on my back and one on my head and I listen as her breathing slows and becomes normal again.

I feel her arm leave my back and sense as she reaches over. I hear her opening the small cabinet next to the bed and move my head to look at what she's doing, but her hand presses more firmly on my head, keeping me anchored against her skin.

Her voice is slightly raspy, soft and languid.

"They play outside in the leaves like children, and their happiness is contagious. I can see them from the window in the kitchen of my cabin. I can hear her laugh, different but still similar to how it was when she was young, and I can hear the rich baritone of his laughter, creating a symphony as their voices meld together in the crispness of the fall day."

I blink my eyes open and take in the words, confused.

She continues, "Between them, there is kindness and understanding and an emotion that defies any definition of love anyone in the universe has ever had. Their love is a fairy tale brought to life. The kind of love we all dreamed of when we were young, but only the few lucky ones were able to get.

"For all the mistakes I made in my life, my absolution comes in being able to witness this - to see my daughter and her children and her husband and her life overflowing with love and happiness every day."

I move to look up and Emily releases my head. There are tears in her eyes and she's reading from a book with a well-worn leather cover.

"What?" I ask.

She turns the book to face me and I see the handwriting on the page of a journal, not a book. Below the words she just read is a drawing. It's crude, but it's evident that it's of the two of us, laughing in a pile of leaves.

* * *

When my father came to me late this morning and said he wanted to go see Andrew for a few days, I was a little surprised at the randomness of the visit. He'd gone to see Andrew a couple of times since he moved into the cabin, but it was always planned in advance.

"Is Andrew okay?" I asked him.

"Perfectly fine," my father said. "I just haven't seen him in awhile, and I'm looking for a chess game that doesn't provide me with quite as much of a mental challenge as I get around here."

I laughed. "Do you need a ride to Delaware?"

He shook his head and smiled at me. "Just to the bus stop. It's not too long of a ride to Annapolis, and Andrew will pick me up there. I'll be home on Tuesday."

It was my turn to smile. I did that every time he referred to this property as his home.

I was already turning the idea over in my mind, with Leon spending the night at JJ's house, and my father gone, I could leave Rory with Fran for a few hours and Derek and I could have a little time alone, something we'd both been craving and looking forward to.

I bundled Rory in her car seat and drove my father to the bus stop. When we arrived, about twenty minutes before the bus was scheduled to leave, I got out of the car to get my father's walker out of the trunk. By the time I carried the walker to the passenger side, my father was standing outside of the car, his overnight bag over his shoulder and a large leather bound book in his hands.

I looked at him curiously and saw him blinking rapidly.

"When Derek came to see me in the hospital after my heart attack, and I heard him tell me that you were having a girl, I wanted to open my eyes so badly to let him know I heard him. I wanted to tell him to tell you that I'd get better. I honestly expected to come back to the cabin and hang in there just long enough for the baby to be born. I didn't think I had much more time than that in me. But I'm realizing, I do. I don't know how much, but I think it's a possibility that I'll be around to see Rory take her first steps and say her first words. Maybe longer. I'm feeling stronger than I have in years, and I've acknowledged my death isn't imminent."

He paused and reached his free hand out to brush the tears off my cheeks. He smiled softly. "Last fall, when you found me, I thought I was on death's door, and I was ready to go. In a couple of weeks, I'll have been sober for an entire year. I'm not ready to go anymore. I want to be around for as long as I can."

I reached my hand up and covered his hand where it was resting on my cheek. I nodded and tried to control my tears. "I'm glad. I'm not ready for you to go yet, either."

"You asked last December what it was like meeting your mother for the first time, what she was like. And I didn't answer you. You've asked me a lot of questions I haven't answered, not because I didn't want you to know, but because it's difficult for me to talk about. You also asked me what I did with my time when I wasn't sailing or fishing or drinking for all of those years. This is what I did."

He handed me the book in his hand, and I took it, touching the soft, brown leather with my fingertips. "I stopped writing in it a couple of years ago, when I'd written all of the stories I wanted you to know. Andrew knew about it. He rescued it from my boat after my heart attack. He knew he was supposed to deliver it to you after I died. But then you came back, and then I got sober, and now I've gotten to know you again. I had to add a few more chapters over the summer and this fall. But it's yours now. I don't want to die before you know all the stories."

With that, my father leaned over and kissed my cheek. He grabbed his walker. "I'll see you here on Tuesday afternoon."

I stared at his retreating figure as he made his way inside the bus depot. Suddenly his trip to Andrew's didn't seem so random. He wanted me to have this book, but he didn't want to be around while I initially explored the pages.

I numbly moved back around to the driver's side of the car, opened the door and sat down. I looked in the rearview mirror, where the baby mirror attached to the back seat of my car reflected Rory's peacefully sleeping face.

I cracked open the first page of the book and smiled at the title of the book. The second page started at the beginning. The story was titled, "Captain Chris and First Mate Andrew Meet Captain Jim."

The stories continued through my father's first weeks at Harvard and meeting my mother. There was a story about him meeting my grandfather for the first time, and about the day he married my mother. There were many stories about Princess Lune being born and all the adventures she had with Captain Chris through her early years.

Each story was written in the third person, like we're all characters in some fictional book, which we could be. Sometimes fact is as sensational and joyous and sad and miraculous as fiction. Each story had sketches drawn on the pages. The first three quarters of the journal had well-worn pages, like my father had written the stories and made the drawings, and then had gone back through and read them over and over again, especially the stories about the adventures he and I shared when I was a child.

After that, the pages were fresher, like they hadn't been turned over and over again. It started up with, "Princess Lune Finds Captain Chris Again," and the stories ended about thirty pages later with "Princess Lune Lives Happily Every After." It's the only story written in the first person, with my father truly giving himself a voice.

I laughed and brushed the tears off my cheeks. I glanced in my rearview mirror again, and my plans for me and Derek arbitrarily altered in my mind. I wanted him and me on our boat for a little while this evening. I drove to the store and bought twenty battery-operated candles. I bought a fondue pot and the ingredients I'd need. I smiled at Rory in her carseat as I walked through the aisles, and she smiled back at me, her eyes everyday more like mine and my father's, like Derek described them. She, too, would be the child with eyes that told a story that you knew you wanted to hear.

This evening was even better than I could have imagined. And when Derek and I were both sated and our breathing slowed, I reached over into the cabinet next to the bed and took out my father's journal. I began to read to Derek while keeping his cheek pressed against my stomach. I read the last three paragraphs in the story of Princess Lune living happily ever after, feeling both oddly exposed and exceptionally wonderful.

When I finish reading, I release Derek's head and he raises it. "What?" he asks, confused.

I turn the book towards him to show him the sketch of he and I laughing in a pile of leaves. "My father's journal," I say. "It's everything I ever wanted to know, and everything I want to remember forever."

Derek sits up next to me against the pillows. He pulls on my body, nudging me slightly, and I move, so that I'm sitting between his legs, my back against his chest. I pull the blankets up to my chest and rest the book on my lap. I flip through the pages with him. There's too much to read in one sitting - far too much. But I let him follow the story line by browsing the titles and looking at the sketches.

"I can imagine reading these stories to Leon and Rory. I can't believe I have them," I whisper.

We flip through the whole book and then I set it aside. I turn in Derek's lap, so that I'm on my knees facing him. "It's amazing, Emily," he says to me.

I nod and smile and kiss him. "I love you. You were my first miracle."

And we start all over again, our bodies pressed tightly against each other, with the journal next to us on the cabinet, opened to the title page .

 _Of Seafarers and Moonlight  
by Christopher Prentiss_

* * *

 _A/N - End! Thanks for all the reviews and sticking with me through another great adventure! I'm turning another story over in my mind, but I'm not sure when I'll be struck with the muse that actually gets the thoughts in my mind into words on a page. Hopefully soon! xoxo_


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